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This paper discusses the instructional design experiences and processes shared by a multi-disciplinary group--including more than a dozen faculty, staff, and students--while developing a series of online courses on Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE) for professional engineers, a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The team size, the complexity and uniqueness of the subject matter, the targeted learners, and the pre-determined research questions created a rare situation in which the team members collaborated and/or negotiated outside the realm of the traditional instructional design process. Over time the team went through two different types of instructional design processes, beginning with a waterfall-type process where the communication between the subject matter experts (SME) and the design team was somewhat limited and finally evolving to a collaborative process where the interaction between the two teams was more direct and immediate. The evolution of the design process and the dynamics between the SMEs and the design team resulted in several major design revisions implemented to improve the quality of the online courses.

Research has shown that creating an online learning community is vital in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) training programs and can be facilitated via the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. For professional learners, an online learning community is influenced by their organizational affiliations. The purpose of this research is to explore learning experiences in groups of professional learners with different and homogenous organizational affiliations in an asynchronous online MBSE module. Through the case study methodology, this research examines four sources of data from two cases: Case 1—learners from different organizations (n = 7); and Case 2—overwhelming majority of learners from the same organization (n = 19). Results showed that learners from the same organization reported higher social presence, which, in turn, corresponded to a higher cognitive presence and higher motivation for future MBSE learning. Based on our findings, we recommend that organizations seeking MBSE adoption coordinate with online course providers to create cohorts to participate in the same offerings to facilitate the process of learning community building. We also recommend MBSE course providers facilitate social interaction on multiple communication platforms and create orientation activities for learners from different organizations to promote social presence.