Course Design Rubric

I have been involved in reviewing online courses recently so I needed some kind rubric to guide me. One of the industry standards is Quality Matters. One thing to make QM more relevant is that SLN is partnered with them, although I recently learned that as SLN transitions to OPEN SUNY, they will be using their own rubric, based largely off the Chico Rubric.

I first began course review using QM. The process was long because the rubric has something like 8 categories and 42 total specific benchmarks to measure when reviewing an online course. The process was even longer because I had to learn how to interpret some of the benchmarks. And some of the benchmarks only the sme would be able to measure. So I began looking for another way.

I wanted something simpler. For example when I began training faculty on how to use Angel lms when we moved from blackboard, I did go to the 6 sln training courses but my team made our own series of training courses for our faculty. Mainly because I wanted to break down the training/learning into is simplest, most basic components. I did not want to get side track, or too advanced to quickly. This was/is my approach to building my own course review rubric.

I looked at other rubrics out there to get some ideas. I sent out surveys to my faculty and students asking them what they love and hate and want more of, out of our online courses. I looked back at my own experiences as a student taking an online degree program. I looked back at what I actually learned during my online masters studies. And lastly I went through each one of our online courses, and most of our blended courses to see what faculty are and are not doing.

With that I have 9 major categories that I think are vital for any profession online course.

1. Design - the course must be uniform. It should flow, It should have due dates posted in many places, Each module should have an overview.
2. Objectives - There should be course level and module level objectives, and they should match. The readings and assignments should all be in synch with the objectives
3. Interaction - Online learning needs plenty of interaction to prevent students from feeling isolated.
4. Assessment Variety - lets use blooms taxonomy to touch on every level of learning
5. Over Communication - explain everything you expect from the students, explain how the readings and lectures they use to complete the assessments will help them meet their objectives, explain what you expect them to do for their assignments, give examples.
6. Teacher Presence - My vip of the group. Students take college courses instead of readings books so they can be guided in their learning by a pro. If the student does not feel like the pro is involved enough, guiding enough, mentoring enough, the student will feel frustrated.
7. Multimedia - student learn best using multiple formats, so lets add some audio, video, and graphics to your course
8. Reflection - have the students reflect on their learning, the changes in their thinking, the growth of their thinking, 
9. Ice Breaker Activities - to have fully engaged interaction the class must trust each other. Ice Breaker activities begin to build that trust.

 I would put teacher presence and interaction at the top of the list.

Who cares if students feel isolated in online courses?

"What do I care if they feel isolated taking my online course? They are there to learn."
This is a comment from a professor that attended one of the SLN workshops that I attended to watch the training. This one of the comments that stands out to me during my internship with SLN.

The discussion centered around the idea of having a space in your online course for the students to introduce themselves and get to know each other. This activity should be one of the first activities that take place in an online course. The reason is so you can get to know your classmates as you would in a traditional face to face classroom. In the classroom, you will say hello and introduce yourself to your neighbors. You might trade phone numbers or emails early in the semester in case you miss a class you can learn about important informatin that you missed. One of the principles of online learning is that you should mimic some things that happen in the traditional classroom. This is because many students report feeling isolated when they take an online class. So logic says the student will have a better learning experience if you make them feel less isolated.

Yet this professor in our training, new to online teaching, said who cares about feeling isolated. It was not his job to hold his students hands and make them feel warm and safe (now I am paraphrasing). His job, as the teacher is to teach and that is all.

Is this idea wrong? Immature? Or brutally honest? I do not agree with it. I think it is a teachers job ot make a student feel warm and safe if that is what is required to have that student learn more.

As I think back to all my college professors, a major one who stands out is someone who took me aside and asked me if everything was ok with my home life, with my friends. He did all this because I got a C on one of his exams. He made all his students who scored below a B- make an appointement with him during office hours to pick up your exam and talk to him. He wanted to know why you were not performing. And he cared.

Fast forward to today, while I complete all my graduate work through online classes, one thing that stands out to me is that I feel isolated. But not from the students, from the teachers. Sure they are quick to answer and email. But they seem absent from my day to day learning, most notably in online discussions. Yet they have an answer. They tell me " the research says", or that "there are two camps, I am in the camp that thinks teachers should not interupt a discussion". Learning needs to be guided.

SLN ID Certification Course Part I Pedagogy VS. Skill

The bulk of my internship has been helping out inside the ID Certification course that SLN runs as a professional development course. Rob was really excited about the high level of dialogue going on in the class and I was also pretty excited to be given the opportunity to be a fly on the wall who was able to read and write up a review of some of the discussions.

In this blog post I would like to talk about my learning while reading the discussion titled Pedagogy and Skill Development. The question posed by the instructor of the certification course was, what is the perfect mix of pedagogy and skill development during a training workshop?

My first thought, without reading the participants responses was that training is all about skill development. But in reality I think the question was a trick because most discussion participants agreed that both were equally important. It is like asking what is more important learning how to use a hammer or learning in what situations you would need to use a hammer, you really need to know both.

One discussion comment really made me think. The author wrote that no matter how small the task when developing a course there is always some form of pedagogy that should be explained. The example used was about posting a syllabus. A pretty basic part of building any online class. But the author of the post wrote about the pedagogical component, that of WHERE  to put the document and WHAT format you have the document in? It really made me realize that even the most basic aspects of course development and training cannot be overlooked, and ALL do involve pedagogy.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a faculty member the other day in regards to how he teaches his course. He teaches a transportation course and he teaches the concepts and knowledge that the student will need to use in a real job after the student graduates. The question was raised, how  do you prepare students to use the knowledge they need for the job along with teaching them the technology side of what the job market requires. The professor argued that he does not teach the technology in class because that would be easy to learn on the job. That part I did not so much agree with but the next part I do. He said if he taught the technology aspect he would have to teach less concepts. The teacher experimented with both, concepts and technology and he has found greater benefit in teaching more concepts. I wonder how this relates to training online learning concepts?

Anothe aspect of the discussion of training was that people learn best by seeing examples. An instructor can teach about discussion forums and the right way to use them and pedgagy of using them, but seeing what a good and bad discussion looks like is vital.

In this regard, the SUNY Learning Network does a great job of providing exemplar courses for those learning about teaching online to view as the standard. I also like that some online learning programs allow students to view sections of an online course before they sign up for the course.

How to build an online/distance learning Program

Had a great talk with Rob the other day about one phase of my internship, working on enlarging the number of online courses offered at SUNY Old Westbury. Rob is my contact at SLN during my internship. If we were in the CIA, which I assure you we are not ;), he would be called my handler.

How do we offer more classes online? 

One way would be to ask professors who already teach online to teach a second or third online course. Another way would be to convince faculty who don’t currently teach online to teach online. And I also thought about recruiting faculty at other school’s, who are experienced online teachers, to come teach a course with us. 
Maybe going above the teacher, in the begining to formulate a strategy with Chairs and Deans might be best?

I think the best path to take is the convince our own faculty who have never taught online to try it out.

But How?

Right now we, and many other schools offer a stipend, cash, to go through the process of building an online course. I think that would be the best way to also convince faculty from other schools to teach a course with us. I mentioned this idea to one professor I work with by asking her, “What would it take for another school to convince you to teach one online course with them, while keeping your full load of teaching her at Old Westbury?” In my mind the convenience of teaching online can also mean that you can teach 5, 10, or 20 sections of the course, all at different institutions. But there has  to be a limit, as to how many courses are too much.

So back to the professor I asked, she told me the money had to be right, that she had taught online at other institutions and she thought the fair thing would be to pay her based on enrollment in her online course. She felt the SUNY adjunct pay is not enticing enough to lure in her level of experience. This is an interesting idea to me and I wonder what the result of asking a group of 20, 50, 100, or 500 faculty would have to say about it.

My next question is, leaving the money aside, how would I convince our existing faculty to begin teaching online? Who would I start with? 

My first thought was to go after the new, young faculty. This group would tend to have more comfort using technology. This group would also be new to teaching and might be more open to try different teaching methods. While more experienced teachers might take the stand “I have always done it this way, why change it now”. I have no proof for this perspective, it is just what my gut tells me. I should ask around though, and find out for sure. A downside for new faculty to teach online was brought up at NERCOMP. New faculty who wish to obtain tenure positions might have a hard time with students taking online courses who do not belong in online courses. This could hurt the teachers tenure track and thus might be convince the teacher to not go out on a limb trying something new until their future is more stable under tenure. One person at NERCOMP mentioned that the a College in Arizon had a category for teachers applying for tenure which gave a stronger weight to teachers who do go out on a limb trying new technology and teaching online. 

Speaking with Rob, he thought it would be best to begin a conversation with experienced faculty. A teacher who has taught the same course many times, who knows the course inside and out, might be looking to try something new, a new way to deliver the same material. While a new teacher ,who s just beginning to feel their way around teaching, might have hard time adding the newness of teaching to the newness of teaching online. I thought this was a great idea.

Carol Williams, the head of distance learning at Abilene Christian University, a school that has had great success growing their online program recommends "starting with faculty who are known innovators on campus."(Bart 2010)

My next plan was to begin a conversation, face to face, with some of the faculty I have a built a strong relationship with. Working at SUNY Old Westbury for 8 years has allowed me to build a strong relationship with numerous members of the faculty. So I made two lists, the faculty I am extremely close with, and the faculty I am reasonably close with.

And I gave myself a new task, to compile a list of experienced faculty that I can talk with. 

What would experienced faculty be? 10 years? 

Another task I gave myself is to see what other schools are doing to lure in faculty. Many do offer money. Talking with Tammie, who is an instructional designer at FIT, FIT seems to have an easy time getting faculty to teach online even with their process. To teach a course online the course first has to be approved by a curriculum committee. Next the faculty member has to attend training sessions and meet with instructional designers to create the course. Lastly the course has to be approved. There are even instances where the faculty is asked to help next semester, peer review another teachers online course before it is an official course. I can see faculty having a hard time agreeing to do all this work, for a little stipend, yet Tammie has many faculty who sign up every semester. 

I am very curious to find out how they created this steady stream of faculty every semester, who wish to teach online. Did they build a foundation of events, public recognition, or just word of mouth or throught advertising in email and posters around campus? Or do they just have a unique culture of teachers.

So this plan is kind of looking like a Professional sports team, where we have two tracks, one where we develop talent from within, the other where we lure in all stars from outside our campus. 

How to find all stars? 

I know Sloan C gives out awards every year to online teaching excellence. Rate my professor might be another place to look.

Rob really liked my idea to begin a conversation with the faculty I have a strong relationship with.

I told him about my conversation with one professor who was concerned that his great in class discussions could not be emulated online, or that his class interaction was so good in his face to face course, why move it online? 

I responded that online discussions have benefits and drawbacks, as per robs presentation at FIT.

The professor I spoke with did show interest and wanted to have more information. Rob pointed out that teaching online does not have to be an all or nothing event. If a teacher is not sure why not create one online discussion, or a discussion online that will continue the discussion in the class. Lets try it out together and see what happens. Trying it on such a small scale is a good test. Lets open the door and begin a dialogue. 

Rob talked to me about how to create a good discussion, and that it is all in the question, where open ended is best. The answer should not be finite. If you ask the class the top 5 reason the textbook lists for WW2 the conversation will end after the first few posts. This is not beneficial.

Rob would ask to see a teachers test questions and will be able to tell what is better for a discussion. It is all in how the questions is asked.

Tell the teacher, l”ets try things out, lets explore together. We might make mistakes but its ok. We are both learning. Lets build a long term relationship, which is better than building one great online course.”

Rob gave me the example of a time he worked with a faculty who took robs advice and tried a debate in an online course. The debate tanked but everyone appreciated and learned from the experience.

One idea for a discussion is to ask the students to find a flaw. The textbook lists 3 major reasons for WW2 why are these flawed. Students love finding flaws.

Rob mentioned that strong online instructors should be enlisted to help win over and train new online faculty, the faculty will trust other faculty before the trust and Instructional Designer.

One task I gave myself is to find strong online instructors.

Teaching online is a way to expand your toolbox, it will not replace the tools you already have and use, take what you know and add too it.

Bart, M. (2010) Steps for Creating and Growing your Online Program. Faculty Focus Blog. Retrieved from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/growing-successful-online-programs-at-a-small-school-2/

Web 2.0/3.0 Resources

Reading through the first discussion in the ID certification course "Creating Useful Resources for Faculty" I am seeing that a lot of my colleagues have a large knowledge of what online tools to use depending on the online course, and I am curious to learn how they found these tools? Is it many years of work? Do they research each tool as the need arises in a specific online course? Is there an online database or blog out their with all the tools you can imagine and more? Do the librarians have a role to play in this dance? Does this question require a new role at University's?

Each faculty will need a unique set of online tools depending on their course needs. And each faculty member will have to learn these new tools along with the online learning management system. Is it too much to learn? During one of the Angel training session at FIT Dan recommends starting off teaching online in a simple way. Build your course and know the basics. As you get more comfortable begin adding tools one at a time. Dan teaches us that you don't have to have the most advanced online course your first few times teaching it.

NERCOMP Conference

Last weekend I attended a very cool Instructional Design Symposium up in Albany hosted by NERCOMP, the NorthEast Regional Computer Program. I was able to meet the person at SLN who is running my internship, Rob Piorkoski. I also was able to meet a previous SLN intern who is now working for SLN Diane Hamilton.

The workshop was very informative. I just love going to these instructional design workshop. Maybe because it is so rare that you meet an instructional designer at a dinner party and the workshops are full of them.

The Symposium consisted of 3 main presentation,

1. Albany College of Pharmacy presented on how they run their instructional design department along with some case studies
2. The University of Albany presented on their systematic instructional design model.
3. Mount Holyoke spoke on their instructional technology group.

The Symposium also had a panel of professors speaking about instructional design from their perspective.

And the even concluded with an interested instructional design group project that was able to get the room working together and collaborating on an interesting project.

Albany Pharmacy

The Albany College of Pharmacy talked about the mechanics of their design process. They study what their team already knows. They review what they have done in the past that works. They study their faculty and students habits. And they study the research, to learn what has worked with others.

One part of their presentation that I liked was how they really study and know the faculty and student population that they deal with. This knowledge really helps them design courses to meet the needs of their unique population. For example the designers spoke about their unique students, who are extremely busy. The students have classes and are expected to work. This leaves them with less time to study. Because of the unique time constraints the student population has very little time to waist so every online activity, assessment, and group work has to have a visible purpose. If the students cannot see how their online work will help them pass the next text they will not waste their time doing the work, and they will probably not sign up for online courses again. 

One way the designers at Albany College of Pharmacy get to know their faculty is by studying the course material that the faculty use in their course. In one example the designers prepped for the first one on one meeting they were having with the faculty member by watching a ton of online video lectures that the faculty member was using with their students. This allowed the designer to become more knowledgeable of the material and also learn about the teachers strengths and weaknesses.

The Albany College of Pharmacy had a great evaluation program set up to make sure their design work was working. They approached this in a few ways. One way was to look at the quantitative data to see how students fared in the same course, with the same professor, where one course was online and the other was face to face. They also looked at the data of a particular student to see how he did in online course work compared to face to face. 

The students were also survey. But the most interested part of their evaluation process and maybe their entire presentation was that at the end of the semester the designers will have a focus group of students meet with the designers without the faculty member and ask them to talk about their experience in the course. The students felt comfortable talking with the designers instead of the teacher because their grade would not be effected. 

I have studied a few evaluation processes but I have never heard of this one. But I really like it. My first thought was how would you get the students to participate, which the designers answered for us. The teachers were told before the class started, in the design process that a few students would be needed so the teacher could ask the student at the beginning of the course, and many times the teachers offered incentives in the form of extra points for students participation. 

The evaluation process might be my favorite part of the design process because you get to hear from the horses mouth what worked and what didn't, what the  students liked, what challenged them, and what provoked the most learning. In the end the students are the major clients at any College so why not ask them how they liked their experience.

I will discuss the University of Albany in a minute, but while they had a very systematic, formal design process they really did not have an evaluation process. 

University of Albany

Wow. These guys really have a beautiful, formal, systematic process to train new faculty to teach online and to prepare them at every stage along the way for developing online courses. 

They began their presentation with a group activity that ended with a concern, that many faculty have a hard time taking off their teacher hats and putting on their learner hats to be able to learn how to teach online. And just like many schools provide a document to their students explaining that taking online courses is not for everybody, Albany hinted that maybe teaching online also, is only for a specific type of teacher. And that some kind of structure needs to be in place to weed out those who are not ready to teach online. They even mentioned a faculty pretest to see if faculty are ready.

This segways into the main portion of their presentation where they discussed two models they use to prepare faculty for teaching online. The first model is designed for teachers who are ready to teach online. They build their course and deliver their course the follow semester. The second model is for faculty who are interested in teaching online and would like to learn more but are not ready to teach an online course right away.

I think this is a great idea. Right now, my College, SUNY Old Westbury only has one model, where you commit to teaching an online or hybrid course, than you come to workshop and complete and online course to learn about teaching online and in a hybrid method. But very recently I was speaking with a faculty member, where I was trying to convince him to teach online. He was interested but was going through his tenure proceedings and did not have the time to add more to his plate. That is understandable. But while I have him interested it would be a good idea to get him enrolled in a self paced course where he can learn about teaching online without having to commit. Even if a professor did have the time they might feel nervous or too boxed in, if in order to learn about teaching online they HAD TO COMMIT to teaching online. So I definitely think their should be two paths.

Albany faculty that commit to teach online enter the OCD training course, which consists of the following;

1. Log into blackboard and complete some modules, where they read about teaching online, and make sure one of the articles scares them, to weed out the faculty who think this will be a pushover activity.
2. One day face to face workshop, where big issues and concerns are discussed.
3. 1 on 1 meeting, usually face to face, for 2-3 hours. Talk about their specific course, plan it out. Talk about specific course objective and concerns. The point of this meeting is that the faculty member leaves with a focus and goal, and they know where they are headed as they begin building their course.
4. Benchmarks are established to make sure the faculty member is meeting their timetables, so the course will be ready for the start of the semester.
5. Designers check in for progress reports.
6. There is a final connect day when faculty come back and share their experiences and their courses with each other, experienced faculty can come by and share their expert tips.
7. Finally, the designers review the course and approved it or send it back to be corrected.

The OCD Flex is a course less stringent, for faculty who would like to learn more about teaching online with having to commit to teaching online.

1. 3 hour face to face workshop
2. enroll in blackboard course
3. Can meet with designers but don't have to.

I really like this model. The teacher kills two birds with one stone by learning about teaching online by becoming a student and going through online modules just their students will. I think it is beneficial for the teachers to experience what their students will experience, it develops empathy and understanding.

I also like how the cohort of new faculty learning to teach online will have one face to face meeting to learn how to technologically build their course and also learn about some of the bigger concerns facing online teaching. While later have a one on one meeting to learn about some more specific concerns facing their class, 

Albany discussed how the one on one meeting was one of the best parts of their design model because the faculty would enter those meetings still concerned, not sure exactly how to do what they set out to do, yet they would leave those meetings with a different attitude. They were focused, had clear goals and objects, and they knew exactly how to get to their goals. 

Marist IT Department  

Marist was the last of the morning presentation. They spoke about their department which ranges from computer support, to instructional design and library research. 

I had two major take aways from their presentation

First is that documentation of how your department does things is important. They spoke about issues that would come up only once a year and how they would never remember the solution so they began to document the issue and solution.

I also began to do this at my position at SUNY Old Westbury. We also do not have procedures written down, and I too was faced with the same issue, of certain problems that would occur so few and far between that I would forget the solution. So I began my own internal knowledge base. And it has helped out tremendously. Right now I am friendly with all my coworkers so it's not such a big deal to ask for assistance. But one day I will be at a new job and I don't want to always be asking for help. I have had coworkers in the past who would ask me how to solve the same problems every week and it does get annoying. 

The second takeaway was to pre-empt problems. So every semester you have new faculty teaching on campus who are not aware of procedures, even simple things like what do I do if my classroom technology is not working. Instead of waiting for them to need assistance and have the new faculty spend more time than needed trying to find help it is a good idea to reach out to them, to welcome them to the College, and hand them a piece of paper with info they need on it.

In one of my position as technology support we deal with password resets. And we don't have the best system. For students to reset their own password they need to do two steps, 1. sign up for our school's emergency alert form, using a text messaging number, and 2. visit the website and reset their own password. The issue is that if they visit us without having signed up for NY alert and fill out the form, it takes 2 hours for the system to process. So our approach has been to get involved with student orientation and have the students sign up before attending their first course. This way if they ever run into a password problem in the future their is no wait time.

Panel Discussion

The Panel discussion made some really good points that I would like to address.

One issue that was brought up was that new faculty who are not tenured might be unwilling to try online teaching or hybrid teaching or other innovative pedagogical approaches like the flipped classroom out of a fear that they might get bad evaluations.

Some students that might not be on board with alternative pedagogical approaches like the flipped classroom might give teachers a bad evaluation. And for new, non tenured faculty, this might hurt their tenure process.

One person in attendance raised a great point that a College in Arizona (not sure which one) give more points to teaching who are willing to go out on a limb and teach risky pedagogy. And this looks better on the tenure application.

The last takeaway that I got was to continue the evaluation process of course design while the course is live. One idea is to pop into the course and monitor the teachers presence by seeing how quickly they respond to emails, or discussion questions. 

Also you can contact the professor during the course, to ask them if their concerns are coming to fruition or not, and if new concerns are arising.

In the end it was a great symposium. 

You can visit the following website to see the slides from the days presentation.

http://nercomp.org/index.php?section=events&evtid=292