In January 2021, my husband and I bought a messy piece of land in Michigan. Some of the land is (barely) tillable farmland, and the other parts are weedy prairie, scrubby forest, and swampy muck. This is what we wanted—a biodiverse piece of land that needs support to bring it back to its natural, harmonious state of being.
To get a better idea of what we were in for, we invited our friend, Steve, who specializes in wetland ecology and terrestrial plant communities. After a brief greeting, he opened the trunk of his car, pulled out a pair of field boots, a small backpack, fluorescent vest, a trowel shovel and a water bottle, and headed across the field. Steve is a man of few words, so we just followed his lead into the forest. We bushwhacked through thorny wild blackberries and invasive buckthorn to a knoll that seemed to breathe a little easier. It was a small oak tree savanna. “This is where you start, it is the healthiest section” he proclaimed. I was confused. I thought for sure we would start with the scrubbiest, prickliest, gnarliest section of the forest. Nope, I discovered: this does not follow the United Nations approved ecological restoration principles, which advise building up the strongest tree community first, as it will spread its health to neighboring tree communities. Ah, I thought, kinda like the HEERF seed money did for my team.
Similar to our scrubby undernourished forest, by March 2021, one year into the pandemic, my team of instructional designers were exhausted. This team of seven held 9,236 consultations with faculty in 2020-21, compared to 3,400 sessions the previous year year. That is a 172% increase and an average of 5-6 consultations per day! The burnout was palpable, even over our Zoom check-in meetings. I often finished a meeting feeling helpless as their director. When instructional designers are introduced to faculty, they are often compared to a therapist. We are the ones that listen, facilitate brainstorming sessions, and offer possible solutions to faculty’s instructional and pedagogical woes. How were we, as a team, going to heal and re-energize to continue our work? Then came CARES…
Within the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020, $14 billion was earmarked for the Office of Postsecondary Education, and that money was termed HEERF Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund. This “seed money” went towards building up areas of strength and new growth within our team. It provided us with the funds to regenerate.
We allocated HEERF funds to build out three initiatives that focused on digital content creation during the pandemic and leveraged new skill sets within the instructional design team. This symbiotic “suite” of initiatives are the DePaul Instructional Game and Innovation (DIGI) Lab, Advanced Media Production (AMP) Studios, and the User Experience (UX) Lab. I came to realize that seeding these initiatives with HEERF funds would become our team’s “oak savanna.” This infusion of energy and monetary commitment to innovation and expanding our services brought a new sense of purpose to the team. We acquired new equipment, studio spaces, and staff to support a growing demand for the work these three labs are doing. Creative energy of the instructional design team is fueling the marketing of our new services to faculty and administrators, which in turn is producing new projects, which in turn is expanding our strength and confidence in what is possible. Thus far, these new initiatives have produced over 25 projects from the DIGI lab,; 20+ AMP projects, and 3 UX projects.
These instructional designers experienced, firsthand, the devastation the pandemic had on our students and faculty. With the HEERF funding, we are beginning to restore and build from a place of strength, a community that will support the design of innovative, student-centered content and instructional delivery practices. By identifying and investing in places of strength within our team, we are able to stabilize and regenerate our energy in order to serve our faculty and students.
