Higher Education

Built for the Rigors of Higher Education

 

Higher education is under real pressure to expand access, prove program value, and adapt faster than traditional development cycles allow. We partner with colleges and universities to design courses and programs that meet those demands without sacrificing academic rigor, faculty voice, or what makes your institution distinct.

 
Let's Discuss Higher Ed Solutions
Desk with notebook and laptop displaying virtual classroom.

What We Do in Higher Education

From a single course refresh to full program development, we partner with faculty, academic leaders, and instructional design teams across the entire course and program life cycle—designing learning experiences that hold up in any format, at any scale.

 

Online Course Design

We design online and hybrid courses with intentional structure built for engagement, accessibility, and the academic voice that makes your institution distinct.

Online learning in higher education requires more than adding online learners to a course in your LMS and posting recorded lecture videos. It requires deliberate design: clear structure, meaningful interaction, assessments that hold up when students aren't in a room together, and a learning experience that supports student success while remaining feasible for faculty.

We design online and hybrid courses from the ground up or build on what institutions already have. Our teams work across all major LMS platforms and bring expertise in accessibility, engagement, and the practical realities of online instruction. As Quality Matters members, we implement QM practices in course design, with certified reviewers on the team.

We also design with AI in mind. Our team is well-versed in helping faculty think through how —and whether— to integrate AI into their courses and assessments. We can help build courses that assess genuine understanding, not just output, whatever approach faculty choose.

What this looks like in practice:

  • Fully online and hybrid course design and development, synchronous and asynchronous
  • LMS-ready builds in Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, Moodle, and custom platforms
  • Accessibility-informed design built into every course
  • Interactive media and digital learning assets
  • Scalable course templates and course structures
  • AI-aware assessment and course design support

Accelerated Course Design

Shorter terms, stronger design. We help institutions redesign courses for 8-week and shorter formats without compressing learning or sacrificing rigor.

Accelerated formats — 8-week, 6-week, and others — are increasingly how institutions expand enrollment, respond to employer needs, and serve working adults. But compressing a 16-week course without redesigning it produces a worse experience, not a faster one.

We help institutions restructure content, realign assessments, and sequence learning so shorter terms produce comparable rigor and meaningful outcomes. Our instructional designers work closely with faculty to preserve academic integrity while making courses genuinely feasible for the learners who need them most.

What this looks like in practice:

  • Redesign of existing courses for 8-week or shorter delivery
  • Learning outcome realignment for compressed timelines
  • Assessment redesign for active, applied learning
  • Faculty collaboration throughout the redesign process

New Program Development

We help institutions design new programs that are academically sound, strategically positioned, and ready to enroll — from initial concept through full course development.

Building a new academic program is a significant institutional investment. Done well, it creates an enrollment channel, a differentiated offering, and a pathway for the learners you most want to serve. Done without the right design infrastructure, it creates a program that's hard to sustain and harder to market.

We partner with institutions at whatever stage they're in. For institutions still working through what a program should look like, our Product Development Workshops (PDW) are a structured engagement that helps academic leaders frame a program's goals, audience, competency map, and course architecture before development begins. For institutions ready to build, we take that foundation and design the program course by course.

Institutions build programs for different reasons — to serve underserved populations, to take a successful in-person program online, to grow into a new disciplinary area, or to align with employer needs and workforce demand. Whatever the goal, we design programs that are academically sound, strategically positioned, and ready to deliver on what you promised when you launched them.

What this looks like in practice:

  • Product Development Workshops to frame new programs before development begins
  • Full program design and course development
  • Competency mapping and outcome alignment
  • Stackable credential and microcredential design
  • Employer partnership support and co-design frameworks

Course Refresh & Modernization

Existing courses can do more. We help institutions build intentional update cycles including refreshing content, modernizing delivery, and keeping courses aligned with current standards and learner expectations.

Courses age. Content becomes outdated, delivery models shift, and learner expectations evolve. A course that was well-designed five years ago may no longer reflect current disciplinary standards, institutional priorities, or what students and employers need.

We help institutions identify where existing courses need updating and prioritize the changes that will have the greatest impact — whether that means refreshing content, redesigning assessments, rebuilding for accessibility and engagement, or something in between. We meet institutions where they are and scope the work around what each course actually needs.

This can range from a focused Semester Prep review before the next term to a deeper collaborative redesign with faculty. The starting point is always the course itself.

What this looks like in practice:

  • Content updates and disciplinary modernization
  • Assessment redesign for applied, active, and AI-aware learning
  • Accessibility remediation and inclusivity improvements
  • Targeted pre-term refresh through Semester Prep
  • Collaborative faculty-led redesign for more substantial updates

Faculty Support

We build faculty into every course we design as genuine collaborators. And for institutions that need more, we offer standalone faculty development, training, and support.

Faculty are central to every course we build. Their expertise shapes the content, their voice shapes the learning experience, and their buy-in determines whether a course succeeds when it gets to students. We've learned that the best course design happens when faculty are genuine collaborators.

Every engagement includes structured onboarding, co-design sessions built around faculty schedules, feedback cycles throughout development, and a clear handoff designed so instructors can teach, update, and truly own the courses we build together. We believe faculty should feel empowered to make their courses their own — not dependent on us to keep them running.

For institutions with broader training needs or limited internal instructional design capacity, faculty support is also available as a standalone service.

What's included in every engagement:

  • Faculty onboarding and collaboration throughout development
  • Co-design sessions and structured feedback cycles
  • LMS orientation and course setup support
  • Course handoff designed for faculty ownership and independence

Standalone faculty support services:

  • Training for new delivery formats — online, hybrid, and accelerated
  • AI in course design: practical frameworks and tools for faculty
  • On-call instructional design consultation during active terms
  • Custom faculty development workshops and cohort training

Media & Interactives

Video, animation, simulations, and interactive content intentionally designed to serve learning. We produce media that fits your courses, your brand, and your learners.

Learning sticks when it's well-designed, and media is an intentional part of that design. We produce video, animation, interactive content, and simulations built to serve the learning experience.

Our media team works alongside our instructional designers, which means every asset we produce is tied to a learning objective and fits into the course architecture. We don't produce media in isolation and hand it off. Our goal is to produce it as part of a cohesive course experience.

For higher education clients, this often means instructor video that humanizes online courses, interactive scenarios that provide opportunities for applied practice, and case studies that put students in realistic professional situations. Every asset we produce meets accessibility standards — captions, audio description, transcripts — from the start.

What this looks like in practice:

  • Instructor introduction and lecture video production
  • Explainer videos and concept animations
  • Interactive scenarios and branching simulations
  • Custom graphics, infographics, and visual assets
  • Case studies and interactive learning objects
  • Accessibility-compliant media production (captions, audio description, transcripts)
  • Media tailored to your LMS environment

Accessibility

Accessibility isn't a final step—it's how we build. Every course, asset, and media element we produce is designed to meet accessibility standards from the start.

Accessibility is a design principle, not a compliance checkbox. Every course, asset, and media element we produce is built to meet accessibility standards from the start, not retrofitted at the end.

This applies across everything: course structure and navigation, document formatting, media production, interactive content, and the guidance we provide to faculty on creating and maintaining accessible materials. We design to WCAG 2.1 AA standards and align with institutional policies, LMS platform requirements, and federal law — including the ADA Title II requirements that expanded accessibility obligations for higher education institutions expected in 2026.

Whether you're starting a new course or bringing existing courses into compliance, we can help.

What this looks like in practice:

  • Accessibility-informed course design and structure built into every engagement
  • Document and content remediation (PDFs, Word files, multimedia)
  • Caption, transcript, and audio description production
  • Accessibility audits of existing course materials
  • Faculty guidance on creating and maintaining accessible courses
  • WCAG 2.1 AA–aligned design across all media and interactives

OER Development

We develop open educational resources that extend the value of your curriculum — openly licensed, pedagogically sound, and designed for broad access and institutional sharing.

Open educational resources extend the value of your curriculum and your faculty's expertise by making high-quality content available to broader audiences, supporting your institutional mission, and creating shareable assets that can seed new programs or partnerships.

We develop OER that is pedagogically sound, openly licensed, and designed for reuse. Whether you're building open courses from the start or converting existing course materials into open formats, we can help you structure the work so the resources are well-designed and genuinely useful.

What this looks like in practice:

  • Open course and module development
  • Conversion of existing course materials into openly licensed formats
  • OER quality review and instructional design support
  • Faculty collaboration for OER authorship and curation

Accreditation Support

When accreditation is on the line, learning design documentation matters. We help institutions prepare the evidence that demonstrates program quality and meets accreditor expectations.

Accreditation reviews increasingly scrutinize course and program design from outcomes data to evidence that learning was designed intentionally. We help institutions prepare the learning design documentation that supports accreditor expectations and demonstrates quality at the course and program level.

This is work we do well because it's rooted in the same principles that drive everything else we build: clear learning objectives, aligned assessments, evidence-based design, and documented processes that hold up under review.

What this looks like in practice:

  • Course and program mapping to accreditation standards
  • Learning outcome alignment and documentation
  • Quality review and course audits for accreditation readiness
  • Design documentation for self-study and site visit preparation

Higher Ed Success Stories

See how we have helped organizations transform their educational offerings.

View All Case Studies
West Academic
Law School Simulations

West Academic

Developed interactive courtroom simulations that allow law students to apply evidence rules through role-based, real-world…

Read Case Study
American Student Assistance
Financial Education & Student Success

American Student Assistance

Redesigned 12 SALT lessons to improve engagement and interaction for college students and recent graduates…

Read Case Study
Landmark College
Accessible Online Learning

Landmark College

Partnered with Landmark College to design accessible, learner-centered online courses that support students who learn…

Read Case Study

Our Approach to Higher Education

 

Higher education presents design challenges that don’t exist in other sectors such as shared governance, faculty autonomy, accreditation requirements, and the need to serve learners with vastly different backgrounds and goals. We’ve been working in this space long enough to understand those realities and develop meaningful strategies to address them.

Our instructional designers are experienced higher ed practitioners. Many are former faculty who hold PhDs, and all of them know how to bring academic rigor into online environments, work with faculty who are skeptical, and design courses that hold up under accreditation scrutiny as well as student expectations.

We also pay close attention to what’s happening in the sector. Workforce alignment, accelerated formats, AI in the classroom, the enrollment cliff—these aren’t abstract trends to us. They’re the context our clients are operating in, and they shape the work we do together.

 
Research-Based Design

We apply learning science and instructional best practices to every course we build, supporting engagement, retention, and transfer while respecting disciplinary norms and faculty expertise.

Workforce Alignment

For institutions navigating employer accountability standards, credential stackability, or career outcome expectations, we can help map program and course outcomes to the competencies that matter and design offerings that demonstrate their value in the market.

Flexible Delivery

We design for on-campus, online, hybrid, accelerated, and a range of other formats and we can help you identify the best-fit solution for your institution's needs without forcing one model onto another or asking faculty to teach in ways that don't fit their discipline.

Faculty-First Collaboration

Good course design doesn't happen without faculty. We structure every engagement around meaningful collaboration, respecting expertise, protecting autonomy, and building trust from kickoff to launch.

Desk with notebook and laptop displaying virtual classroom.

Higher Education Insights

Blog Ask an Expert Course Design

Ask An Expert: Kristin Pinyan

Lead Instructional Designer Kristin Pinyan shares insights on higher education instructional design, faculty collaboration, and creating impactful online courses.

Nov 18, 2025
Read Article
Blog Ask an Expert Course Design

Ask an Expert: Jessica Hecht

Meet Jessica Hecht, Lead Instructional Designer at Six Red Marble, who collaborates with faculty to design engaging courses for all...

Oct 20, 2025
Read Article

 

Our Partners

 

What Clients Say

Hear from clients who have partnered with Six Red Marbles.

I was skeptical at first, but now I’m a convert. Six Red Marbles supported me in creating high-quality online course materials that truly enhanced the learning experience.

Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values

Tulane University

Six Red Marbles consistently delivered high-quality work and fostered a collaborative, respectful partnership. Their professionalism and responsiveness exceeded our expectations throughout every review cycle.

Co-Director for Undergraduate LC Online and Intersession Programs

Landmark College

Six Red Marbles is consistent and diligent in pushing projects toward excellence.

Associate Provost of Academic Innovation and Strategic Initiatives

Howard University

The relational aspect of working with SRM was a delight. There was professionalism and authenticity in every project call that made for a genuinely collaborative atmosphere.

Beth Stewart, MPH

Senior Project Coordinator, Rocky Mountain Public Health Training Center, Colorado School of Public Health

 

Ready to Transform Your Educational Content?

The best way to get to know Six Red Marbles is to work with us. Let’s talk about how we can support your goals and create learning experiences that make a lasting impact.

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