Our LXD Team’s Guiding Principles for Accelerated Courses
As institutions expand 8- and 6-week course formats, the challenge isn’t just compressing time—it’s preserving clarity, rigor, and student success in a much tighter window.
Accelerated learning can increase flexibility and help more students complete their degrees. But without thoughtful redesign, compressed courses can just as easily lead to cognitive overload, learner disengagement, and uneven outcomes.
To better understand what works, I spoke with members of our Learning Experience Design (LXD) team who regularly partner with higher education institutions to build and redesign accelerated courses. Their approach centers on four core principles: clarity, alignment, inclusivity, and learner-centered design.
Watch the full conversation:
Four Principles for Designing Effective Accelerated Courses
Our LXD team’s guiding principles when compressing a course are clarity, alignment, inclusivity, and learner-centered design. Below, the team shares some of the most effective strategies they use to put each principle into practice.
1. Clarity: Make Expectations Explicit
In a compressed course, lack of clarity is the biggest barrier to learning. Students don’t have the luxury of figuring things out over time—they need to understand expectations from the start.
Effective accelerated courses:
- Clearly state the expected time for each module and task
- Use consistent weekly structures and predictable deadlines
- Provide tools like checklists to help students stay organized
Clarity reduces cognitive load and allows students to focus on learning rather than navigation. As James Peters explains, designing for accelerated formats requires careful attention to how students experience the work:
“When you’re thinking about cognitive load, you have to think about the activities that students are going to be engaging in and making sure that the learning objectives support that student experience so they are able to be successful.”
— James Peters, Team Lead, Learning Experience Design
2. Alignment: Design Backwards from Outcomes
In accelerated formats, every activity has to earn its place. That starts with using backwards design to identify learning outcomes and ensure that assessments and activities directly support those outcomes. It also means making deliberate decisions about what content is essential.
Our team works with faculty to:
- Prioritize “must know” content
- Evaluate whether assessments truly measure the intended outcomes
- Stress test workload to ensure it maintains rigor without overwhelming students
Alignment also requires questioning what assessment choices are most effective in a compressed format. As Jessica Hecht puts it:
“Is a paper the best way for learners to demonstrate this outcome? Does a weekly quiz really show synthesis, or would a different approach be more effective? Asking these questions makes the alignment between learner outcomes and what the students are doing week-to-week really direct and really clear.”
— Jessica Hecht, Learning Experience Designer
3. Inclusivity and Accessibility: Design for All Learners
Accelerated courses leave little room for barriers. If content isn’t accessible or flexible, students can fall behind quickly. That’s why our designers apply Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to ensure:
- Multiple ways for students to engage with content
- Flexibility in how students demonstrate learning
- Inclusive materials that meet accessibility standards
Using different assignment modalities—discussions, video, and visuals in addition to papers—is essential in accelerated environments. As Juanita Fralin explains:
“Having that flexibility and using the UDL framework really helps ensure that all learners are coming to these accelerated courses with the tools to succeed.”
— Juanita Fralin, Senior Learning Experience Designer
4. Learner-Centered Design: Set Students Up for Success
The pace may be faster, but learners need to feel confident they can succeed within the timeframe. Learner-centered accelerated courses prioritize the learner by:
- Respecting prior knowledge and promoting autonomy and self-direction
- Creating space for reflection and meaningful engagement through active learning—discussions, case studies, and applied work
- Using smaller, more frequent assessments to identify gaps in learning early
- Providing regular instructor touchpoints to keep students engaged and on track
As Liz Badolato put it, the goal is to ensure students don’t feel overwhelmed when they enter the course:
“We don’t want students to enter the course and see a whole bunch of content and get afraid right away. We want them to always feel like they are confident and feel like they can complete the content in a meaningful timeframe, even in the compressed format.”
— Liz Badolato, Associate Learning Experience Designer
A True Partnership with Faculty
Strong accelerated courses are built through collaboration between faculty and learning experience designers. Faculty bring deep subject matter expertise and make final decisions about course content. Learning experience designers bring expertise in how to structure that content within the constraints of a compressed format.
Together, they:
- Identify where content can be streamlined or combined
- Apply learning science and design best practices
- Embed accessibility and inclusive practices in the course
- Ensure the final course reflects best practices in online learning design
This partnership is what allows accelerated courses to be both shorter and stronger. As Liz Badolato explains:
“It’s really a partnership. Faculty are bringing the expertise in their discipline and their subject, and we’re bringing the expertise on how to build effective learning experiences, especially in that compressed format.”
— Liz Badolato, Associate Learning Experience Designer
Designing for Speed, and for Learning
Accelerated learning isn’t just about moving faster—it’s about designing differently. When clarity, alignment, inclusivity, and learner-centered design are built in from the start, compressed courses can maintain academic rigor while better supporting how students learn today.
As more institutions explore accelerated formats, success will depend on intentional, evidence-backed redesign.
Ready to Design Accelerated Courses That Work?
Learn more about how Six Red Marbles supports accelerated course design—and partner with our LXD team to build courses that protect rigor, support faculty, and keep students moving forward.
About the Team
James Peters, Team Lead, Learning Experience Design, spent six years teaching at an experimental high school in Seattle before joining Microsoft, where he served as an instructional designer, project manager, and group manager. He then dedicated eight years to Giant Campus, leading a team in creating courses for online high schools. After managing the development of career education courses at Imagine Learning for two years, James returned to his roots in instructional design, video and audio editing, and writing. He joined SRM in 2022.
Juanita Fralin, Senior Learning Experience Designer, has 10+ years of experience designing learning experiences with a focus on art direction, user experience design, and media. She has developed instructor-led and web-based training for the aerospace and semiconductor industries, as well as other high-tech companies. At SRM, she’s been involved in developing curriculum for government agencies, higher education institutions, and social justice organizations. Her goal as an instructional designer is to effect positive change in the world, one learner at a time.
Jessica Hecht, Learning Experience Designer, has built a career driven by a passion for learning. She began as a Social Studies Curriculum Specialist, channeling her MA in history into K–12 learning products before transitioning to instructional design in 2019. At SRM, she’s built everything from college courses and video-based learning to corporate training, bringing the same curiosity to every project. She’s equally energized by the people side of the work: getting to know clients and working collaboratively with them to create learning experiences that resonate with their audiences.
Liz Badolato, Associate Learning Experience Designer, has an interdisciplinary background spanning physics and English. Before joining Six Red Marbles, she spent several years in higher education, teaching courses in physics, astronomy, and writing while developing hands-on labs and research-focused curricula. With a Ph.D. in English and a second Ph.D. in Physics in progress, her work bridges scientific problem-solving and clear communication. She brings that perspective to her projects at SRM, where she focuses on designing learning experiences that make complex ideas accessible, engaging, and meaningful for a wide range of learners.
