3. Program Introduction Rapid Expansion of Online Program Few Faculty Members Prepared to Teach Online Faculty Conversion of F2F Courses Market Share Competition
Our research really involved 2 phases… More of a program development phase where we where scrambling to figure out what to do to help our faculty quickly develop quality online courses…so we conducted a pilot study where we explored the literature and focused our efforts on identifying the various elements of online courses that reflected a quality educational experience. We then surveyed the faculty to identify what components they did or did not perceive as critical to a quality online experience.The second phase of our research was more evaluative in nature…most of our classes were up and running, but we were unsure about the quality of the course or learning experience so we use the QM rubric (which had been identified as the tool for evaluating faculty performance) to develop a second survey to identify the components and aspects of our online courses that faculty now perceived as critical to the quality of their online instruction/learning experiences.
Elate wiki http://elatewiki.org/index.php/Main_PageConducted two workshops how to facilitate critical thinking in online courses and how to promote effective discussions in online courses.Participated in developing a course that was originally supposed to be completed by any faculty in the university who wanted to teach online classes…no clout to back it up…instructional designer reconfigured original course content which resulted in an online course that was more demanding than originally intended…as a result, faculty were not inclined to complete it and missed the potential benefits for gaining insight into developing and teaching online courses.
LTTOQM rubric not used consistentlyCreated blog to announce and summarize content of the LTTO meeting and Doodle to let faulty to identify best times to comeGroup development now good because gives us more than one person to teach courses and brings several perspectives to design of courseOn demand assistance being able to contact unified technology support person (Yasemin) who will come to office and help you trouble shoot difficulties
Where we see ourselves in this Faculty Initiative is moving from a more random beginning where individuals literally developed courses by the seat of their pants….to a more consistent approach involving a team (instructional designer, faculty, unified technology support) and a more planned approach to course development….all this in an effort to redefine the quality of our program and the marketability of our program.
