Faculty members from multiple institutions argue that course design operates most effectively when approached as a relational practice rooted in care rather than as a transactional workflow. The reflection, contributed by Annette Miles, Helen Krauthamer, and Uzma Amir, challenges the current institutional tendency to reduce course design to procedural tasks. Such tasks include migrating content online, meeting accessibility checkboxes, and mapping learning outcomes to assessment rubrics.
This framing represents a departure from how many colleges and universities currently structure course development. Institutional pressure often pushes faculty toward efficiency metrics and compliance requirements, potentially undermining deeper pedagogical thinking. Miles, Krauthamer, and Amir contend that treating design as a transactional exercise misses the relational dimensions that shape student learning.
The authors position care as central to effective course architecture. This perspective aligns with growing scholarship on care-centered pedagogy in higher education, which emphasizes faculty attentiveness to student needs, learning conditions, and the emotional dimensions of education. Course design grounded in care requires instructors to consider not just what content students encounter, but how learning environments are structured to support belonging, engagement, and growth.
The practical implications matter for both faculty and students. When instructors approach design as care work, they typically invest time in understanding learner barriers, designing inclusive activities, and building feedback loops that respond to actual student experience. This often results in courses that feel less impersonal and more intentionally built for the humans inhabiting them.
The reflection appears on Faculty Focus, a platform dedicated to higher education teaching and learning practice. Its publication signals growing recognition among faculty development professionals that institutional norms around efficiency and compliance warrant examination. The piece invites educators to reconsider course design not as a compliance checklist but as an opportunity to enact educational values through deliberate, thoughtful practice.
For faculty currently redesigning courses or developing new