Ohio University’s Office of the Provost officially closed the Office of Instructional Design on Aug. 31.
The Provost’s office decided to close the OID to focus on university priorities and changing educational technology, according to an email from Dan Pittman, the senior director of communications for University Communications and Marketing.
Pittman also said in his email, the move to close the office is part of OU’s focus on allotting resources to the “highest-impact priorities.”
According to Pittman, the decision will also ensure the longevity of OU’s academic support services.
Patrick Mose, a former senior instructional designer with the OID, worked in the office for more than 10 years and described what the OID’s role at the university was.
“This role involved program design, course design, faculty development, faculty training, quality assurance, quality reviews, program redesign and also some aspects of research,” Mose said.
On Aug. 7, OU announced OID would host workshops from Aug. 17-21, with expanded drop-in hours, to help faculty prepare their public course syllabi, a new requirement enforced through Senate Bill 1.
On Aug. 31, ten days after the week-long workshop ended, the OID was sunset and 11 people lost their jobs as a result.
Mose said he and the other designers were not aware ahead of time that the office was being shut down. He also said the instructional designers were not given the opportunity to move and work in other offices or departments.
According to Mose, all OID employees were informed of the closure during a 16-minute Teams meeting at 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 31.
While Pittman did not provide a specific number as to how many people were laid off, he said most positions within the office were terminated and a limited number of people were reassigned to other units.
Mose lost his job due to the closure and said out of the 12 members on the team, he believes only one person was retained.
Larry Hess, a former instructional designer at the OID, was also laid off. He worked at OU for almost 15 years and posted to LinkedIn to share the news, which he said was the result of university reorganization.
According to Pittman, the responsibilities of the OID were redistributed to two other divisions to continue providing instructional design and course support. He said OHIO Online has assumed OID’s compliance responsibilities and will support faculty with their online courses as needed.
Pittman also said The Center for Teaching, Learning and Assessment will now support faculty development, course design and instruction across “all modalities.”
Jeremy Henkel is the associate director for faculty programming in the CTLA. Henkel said none of the jobs from the OID transferred to the CTLA.
“As I understand it, most of what OID did has been more absorbed by OHIO Online or Office of Instructional Technology more so than from CTLA,” Henkel said.
Mose said he felt the university should have handled the OID’s closure in a more open way. He also said there was speculation among the instructional designers that the university knew for a while the OID was going to be closed.
“I believe this is something that the university knew as early as April, as early as May, they knew that they wanted to get rid of the office,” Mose said.
Mose also said many at the office became suspicious after the university sent out numerous Requests for Proposals. Mose said while they could only speculate about what was coming, they were confused why the university was requesting outsourced work that OID was capable of doing.
Now that OID is closed, Henkel said the employees' jobs within CTLA may become more difficult, especially when designing courses to help faculty with instructional material.
“We worked very closely with a couple of the instructional designers to help design those courses to be really effective," Henkel said. “If we were to have to design another certification now, I'm not certain how we would do that, given that we wouldn't have the support from OID that we had before.”
Mose said there are better ways to handle the financial issues OU is having, and wishes OU would have discussed potentially reallocating resources with the OID before eliminating the office. He also said if budgeting was the issue, most of his colleagues would probably have preferred to take a pay cut rather than being fired.
“They just came out of the wind and sent the whole office packing,” Mose said. “That is something that also questions the integrity of the university in terms of how they handle their employees who have stood with them for a long time even when they had very, very difficult moments in terms of program ratings and redesigning and all that.”
