Several years ago, Seton Hall University created a master course template based on the Quality Matters Rubric™ to provide faculty with a foundation on which to build pedagogically sound and content rich online courses. The master course template contains materials that may not be known by faculty such as hardware and software requirements, the university's statement for students with disabilities, and technology support information. Since the template is populated with generic content, it can be used university wide. In addition, the template, in theory, provides a consistent learning environment for students, reducing the stress of finding materials in new courses and helps faculty through the development process. Although this process seemed like a good idea, the instructional designers were experiencing a few challenges when supporting faculty with their online course development.
The challenges most frequently encountered by the instructional designers were different fonts and sizes were found in the content due to copying and pasting directly into to Blackboard from MS Word, faculty felt overwhelmed having to ‘build' the course in Blackboard when their skills were rusty, the process was slow and more courses were being converted from face to face to online versions, template materials (content place holders) were not deleted from courses and when courses were reviewed against the Quality Matters Rubric™, most needed significant revisions.
In an effort to provide targeted professional development opportunities for faculty and streamline the process for developing online courses, several resources including an online teaching and learning workshop, content templates, and a personal learning plan were created to ensure quality courses were developed, that faculty had a better experience, and the instructional design team could produce more online courses while still maintaining their workload.
Below is a list of current faculty development resources which will be shared during the session.
Exemplar course: Developed by Dr. Brigitte Koenig, Department of History, the course serves as an example of the amount of detail online students need in order to be successful in their online course. Faculty have commented that it is helpful to see a completed course as a reference when developing their own content. The exemplar course is changed every other year to highlight the work of other faculty.
Master course template: The development course shell is populated with generic university content such as student resources, hardware and software requirements, and copyright and academic policy requirements, and library information. This content remains part of the course and is updated every year.
Content development templates: Content templates that match the Quality Matters Rubric™ expectations as well as the layout in the master course template help faculty in developing their course materials by clearly identifying the must haves such as response time for communication and by providing an example from other online course. The examples are used with faculty permission as highlights their hard work. There are 6 content templates including faculty information, course participation requirements, course welcome, and worksheets for developing measurable course goals and learning objectives. The word templates are easy to fill out and helps faculty with organizing their content. The examples in each template show faculty what level of detail is needed and how it expectations can be phrased. By using these templates faculty are able to focus on content development rather than ‘building' the course in Blackboard. However, this is not to say that technical skills are not important to successfully offer an online course.
Personal learning plan: The checklist asks faculty to identify areas (Blackboard based) they either need or would like to learn more about to manage their course. The checklist also serves are a direct marketing tool for workshops and Teaching and Technology Center events. The instructional design team works with the computer training center to ensure faculty have the necessary skills to facilitate an online course with confidence.
Course development checklist: This simple checklist provides faculty and instructional designer with a simple list of items that need to be in the course to meet Quality Matters™ expectations.
Online Teaching Workshop: The two day face to face workshop held during the fall offers sessions on academic integrity, developing a module, using media to enhance your online course, and the difference between teaching face to face and online among other sessions. Faculty who participate in the entire workshop are given a Certificate of Completion and are named as Online Faculty Innovators on Seton Hall University's EPirate Blog.
Online faculty experience course: level 1 and level 2: These 12-day online courses allow faculty to experience online learning from the student perspective. Each course is divided into 4 modules; each module includes course development tutorials, developed in Articulate, content templates, Blackboard tutorials, resources, guidelines, and assignments to reinforce key areas of online course development and teaching. The courses are facilitated by an experienced online faculty member and members of the instructional design team. Comments from faculty participants have been positive thus far.
All of these resources have improved the quality of online courses and most important increased faculty satisfaction. Online course development and teaching can be overwhelming for the first few times but with the right kinds of support, it can be a positive and engaging experience. Participants will be able to use the ideas to implement their own online faculty development programs.
