Abstract
The creation of USI’s new Master of Arts in Criminal Justice (MACJ) program has involved much more than just university and state approval. Guided by Online Learning, all MACJ courses are going through the Online Course Development Program (OCDP). In this presentation, we demonstrate how collaboration between the Criminal Justice Department and Online Learning through the OCDP and Quality Matters (QM) and the co-creation of courses by faculty have led to important benefits for students, faculty, and the program director. Through the development of a MACJ BlackBoard template, Criminal Justice faculty can share assignments, assessments, and rubrics with each other to avoid duplication of efforts while at the same time creating a more uniform look and feel to MACJ courses for students. Working with a dedicated instructional designer, Christine Nelson, provides an external quality control, ensuring our courses have similar rigor and workload. By co-creating courses, Criminal Justice faculty shared the workload of course creation and were able to collaborate substantively, providing students with additional expertise and perspectives. From a graduate director perspective, the co- creation of courses provides flexibility in scheduling and can help balance faculty teaching loads. In this presentation, we discuss the benefits of collaboration and cooperation to improve course and program quality and student success.