Faculty in higher education come from a wide variety of disciplines and settings and bring with them a wide variety of unique personal and professional knowledge, skills, and experiences. Faculty are expected to create learning experiences that are high-quality, effective, and that meet certain standards (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023). Faculty often lack a background or experience in how to design effective learning experiences. To address this problem, institutions of higher education often employ instructional designers (IDs), trained learning designers, to collaborate with faculty on course design and development, as well as to provide other types of support. While these collaborations have the potential to bring together the unique contributions of each individual, and while faculty have reported multiple benefits of these collaborations, several factors challenge these partnerships. Understanding these challenges and the unique, complex dynamics of these collaborations is important for determining how to optimize their success and to leverage their potential. Research on collaboration between faculty and IDs has grown over the years and has provided a collection of useful insights into the various factors that affect collaboration. However, lacking was a study that proposed a model that was based on these "collective" insights and rooted in the perspectives of faculty, IDs, and administrators - three key stakeholders that have been found to affect collaboration. This study used a qualitative, grounded theory approach to explore the complex dynamics of ID and faculty collaborations with the purpose of developing a model for facilitating their success. Through semi-structured interviews, participants provided rich descriptions, detailed insights, and deeper understanding of the factors that affect these unique collaborations. Eleven instructional designers, two faculty members, and one administrator participant participated in the study. Participant's responses in this study aligned well with what was found in the existing literature about ID and faculty collaborations. However, their responses provided additional nuance that helped inform a grounded theory. Following comparative analysis of the data, a grounded theory model was proposed: Successful course design collaborations between IDs and faculty in higher education are facilitated by inclusion (pursuit) of the following three components: (1) A definition of "success" and quality, defined in direct relation to the key factors found to affect collaboration, (2) An explicit definition and/or designation of collaborative approach (collaborative negotiation), (3) Co-creation with the three stakeholders (IDs, faculty, and relevant administrators), with leadership as the driver. This study provides a unique, triangulated perspective of how IDs, faculty, and relevant administrators in higher education perceive the collaboration process through the lens of identified barriers and facilitators. Further, this study generates implications for ID training, ID roles and tiles, organizational culture, and future research. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]