Fundamentals of Online Course Design: A Model for Faculty Development Valerie West Rich Hernandez Mary Mauldin The Medical University of South Carolina

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Fundamentals of OnlineCourse Design A Model
for Faculty DevelopmentValerie West Rich
HernandezMary Mauldin The Medical University
of South Carolina
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Overview of Presentation

• Background - Valerie West
• The Course - Rich Hernandez
• Outcomes - Mary Mauldin
• Discussion - Everyone

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(No Transcript)
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Characteristics of MUSC

• Free standing academic health center
• Decentralized culture/faculty support structure
• Excellent core of early adopters - beta site
  for WebCT
• Some outstanding human resources

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The Issue

• Growing distance education involvement
• Distributed education innovations
• Administrative push
• No central source of free help for faculty
• No ones job to organize faculty support
• No new resources

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Selling the Idea

• Identify the issue with data
• University wide survey
• Issues identified
• Engage stakeholders
• Provost
• Retreat with Deans and key faculty and
  administrators

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Proposing the Program

• Semester long, 500- 800 weekly
• Commitment to a course or project
• Agree to train others
• Hire our own faculty to teach
• Reverse roles - pay students as teachers
• Grassroots group development

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Approval of Funding

• Initial Budget- 21,000 (808 per faculty)
• Faculty and Teaching Assistants
• Supplies
• Source of funding
• Surprise addition - Laptops (60,000-3,116 per
  faculty

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Marketing to Faculty

• Directly through multiple means
• Through Colleges/Deans

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Planning

• Faculty Planning Group
• Assessing participant needs
• Addition of Laptops/Software
• Physical location considerations
• Acceptances

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Lessons Learned

• Get data
• Engage key stakeholders
• Listen and adapt
• Make it doable
• Get people excited
• STAY FLEXIBLE

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What We Taught

• Pedagogy of online teaching (Webagogy )
• Instructional design
• Working with graphics
• Transferable web skills
• WebCT tools
• Other course building tools

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How We Taught It

• Lecture
• Demonstration
• Open labs
• TAs
• Guest speakers

• Impromptu activities
• Online discussions
• Online resources
• Student show tell

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Additional Innovations

• Laptop surprise aftermath
• Wired classroom
• Participant Faculty TA network
• Franks minute

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Course Quick Tour
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Pre-Course Survey

• What do you want to accomplish?
• Get a course online
• Engage students in discussions/activities

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Pre-Course Survey

• What skills are you hoping to develop through
  this course?
• Independence
• Graphics
• Quizzes
• Online Discussion

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Pre-Course Survey

• After completing this course, I would be very
  happy if I could
• Complete a course online
• Put things up independently
• Train/help others

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Post-Course Survey

• 94 met their goals
• 100 more comfortable designing and using
  web-based instruction
• 100 said time devoted was worth it
• 94 said they could help others
• 83 developed a usable unit

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Post-Course Survey

• Highest Rated Items
• Recommend course be taught again (100)
• Recommend to others (94)
• Faculty had expertise to teach the course (94)

• Lowest Rated Items
• Theoretical Issues
• Open Source Systems viable option
• Introduction to other systems

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Post-Course Survey

• If you were teaching course, what would you add,
  remove, or change?
• Hands on practice
• More Dreamweaver
• Problems from the field
• Divide class into groups

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Summary

• Course Structure divide class into groups
• Content less testing, less Blackboard, more
  Dreamweaver
• Methods More hands-on

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Lessons Learned

• Relevance
• Dont waste their time
• Be flexible
• Participants are bringing experiences with them
  (lessons from the field) and they want to share
• Takes a lot of energy - plan for ways to
  encourage and motivate