A Marie Kondō-Inspired Approach to Designing Accelerated Online Courses

Abstract

Accelerated courses offer the same learning outcomes and credit hours as their semester-length counterparts but over a shorter duration of study. At many universities, accelerated online courses are gaining traction as a solution to students' demand for more flexible scheduling. Many educators find it challenging to convert 16-week online courses to eight-week online courses. To help think through this conversion, we have been inspired by Marie Kondō's system for decluttering and tidying living and work spaces, only keeping items that are needed and spark joy. In this article we share our Marie Kondō-inspired approach to designing accelerated online courses.