Higher education in the “Digital Age” demands educators to gain online teaching and learning expertise. As such, pioneering institutions offer students certification opportunities to become online instructors. I present my recent development with course conversion through constructive mentorship and systematic application of effective practices to guide successful online pedagogical outcomes.
The purpose of my proposal is twofold: a) to share the conversion process going from the student role to faculty role and b) to unravel the conversion process of a traditional face-to-face course to an asynchronous fully online course. This presentation serves as a guide to effective practices for current and future online instructors, as online course development remains foreign and often lacks universal structure. As such, sequential steps from the process of conversion to the delivery of the course are introduced. As an added bonus given the timing of my course and the conference, I will also be able to share potential course revisions informed by student evaluations and assessment information from my practicum mentor, Dr. Eric Fredericksen. The authentic experience presented in my proposal is rooted in a cohort model.
As an emerging scholar in a time where online teaching and learning affords doctoral student relevance and marketable qualities, I elected to enroll in the online teaching and learning (OTL) certification program at the University of Rochester as I complete my doctoral degree. Teaching and learning in what is referred to as the “Digital Age” position communications technology at the forefront with the new generation of students (Brown, 2001). Further, knowledge acquisition in the online context involves a complex set of cognitive skills from students as information is delivered in diverse modalities from images, sound, text, to a blend of the three. To this extent, a contrast between the face-to-face and online conditions of learning is called for given the growing trend of OTL. However, an extensive search of the literature yields limited experimental and/or controlled quasi-experimental studies to compare learning effectiveness. As such, I will reflect on my experience as a learner of a fully online course and as an instructor who designed and is currently teaching an online course for the first time. My long-term goal is to contribute to the scant existence of quantifiable research studies while I advance in online teaching practices.
With prior teaching experience of traditional graduate-level courses, I was challenged to convert a long-standing core course at the Warner School of Education to fully online. ED 524: Survey Design is a requirement in the Educational Leadership department. Unlike the standard 3-credit courses that run for the duration of a semester, ED 524 is a 1-credit course that consists of two face-to-face sessions of seven hours each offered on Saturdays to accommodate working professionals. Despite the effort, the weekend schedule remains insufficient to meet the scheduling needs of individuals such as parents, which makes up a large population of doctoral students. The circumstance calls for the increase of flexibility that is unique to and afforded only by online spaces.
As part of the OTL program, I enrolled in EDE 486: Designing Online Courses. Admittedly, the task to convert the complex design of two lengthy sessions into several learning modules was daunting to a first time online course designer. However, the course provided me with the opportunity to gain critical skills, valuable knowledge, and theory-driven perspective necessary to successfully design, convert, and teach both online and hybrid courses. EDE 486 is in fact, a fully online course to provide students real-world experience as online learners while we convert to online instructors. In the course, I explored learning and teaching principles, faculty and institutional perspectives, instructional design concepts, conceptual frameworks for online learning, and the newest instructional tools. The final product is the complete development of the online version of ED 524: Survey Design, which I currently teach. To my surprise, the student count is almost double that of the face-to-face version.
From hereon out, I will highlight key aspects from the conversion process of a face-to-face course to an asynchronous fully online course. The term asynchronous is defined as instruction with a time lag between the presentation of content and student responses in a virtual space (Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, 2010). The goal of this presentation is to inform effective practices for current and future online instructors. The targeted audience of this presentation is the vast community of eager educators in higher education who desire to understand the reality of course conversion and design. I will unravel the bolts and nuts of the non-linear process during the discovery session. I describe the conversion process as a craft that requires intentionality and mindful planning. Since OLC Accelerate is the leading global venue that covers the field of online learning, my presentation will help online instructors avoid the tedious task of reinventing the wheel and falling into unforeseen challenges of online course design. I will engage my audience in a practical manner with a variety of artifacts from the conversion and implementation process of my fully online course. My contributions come from chronicled events from the fourteen weeks of preparation and six weeks of course delivery. I turn to student narratives from first time and seasoned online learners for course design implications.
My discovery session will include a PowerPoint that displays five essential components for course conversion, and are as follows: a) course syllabus re-conceptualization; b) affordances & limitations; c) instructional resources & web 2.0 tools; d) mentorship; e) peer collaboration & support. Every slide will contain selective information that is pertinent to prospective online instructors. To encourage audience engagement, I will provide the opportunity to compare the syllabi of the face-to-face course and its online version, as re-conceptualization tends to be most difficult to course designers. Accordingly, the comparison should lead to the affordances and limitations of online spaces, many of which result from the instructor’s integration (or lack thereof) of resources and web 2.0 tools. In my instructional resources and tools slide, I will incorporate hyperlinks to the top five that are commonly used. This effort affords my audience an interactive experience and exposure to innovative tools, and will prompt informative exchanges.
Further, formal mentorship from my professor was tremendously helpful in my transition from student to instructor. A trace back to the early days of online courses will reveal independent faculty members who re-create lectures with courses that differ by idiosyncratic structures. However, the development and delivery of effective online courses require technology expertise and successful pedagogy that few instructors (new and seasoned) possess (Oblinger & Hawkins, 2006); not many have formal training in instructional design so mentorship is crucial. Further, the process of course design moves beyond delivery of content and therefore requires the construction of a series of purposeful learning activities. A team consisting of peers and a mentor is recommended, as numerous skills are required for designing, developing, and delivering an online course.
As such, I urge higher education institutions to offer some form of mentorship to prospective online instructors through either a certification program, practicum course, or potentially communication with a veteran from another institution. The design process is naturally overwhelming partially because of isolation, which can be remediated through peer support. As a new adjunct instructor, peer feedback is highly valued. The process is demanding and availability of a few extra pairs of fresh eyes for pilot testing the new course is vitally important. Again, this context calls for rich collaboration between a network of online instructors. To illustrate the fruitful engagement between my peer-reviewers, I will share snippets of our constructive feedback to each other along with corresponding course revisions.
Finally, I will continue to engage the audience with hands-on activities. A primary component of a fully online course is instructor’s expertise. Research suggests that the instructor of a fully online course should also be the original member who developed the course (Fredericksen, Pickett, Pelz, Swan, Shea, 2000). While my course is designed to be asynchronous and fully online, my presence to the students is crucial. In order to provide students with content, I opted for Panopto to record lectures that range from three to 10 minutes in length. The audience will be able to access a selected Panopto original by me to experience the learner’s end. Last, but certainly not least in the conversion process is grade reconciliation that I will highlight. To minimize confusion and delays with grading, an efficient online instructor should utilize the Learning Management System (LMS) at their institution to its full potential. The successful reconciliation of the grade center requires intensive time, but will save even more time in the long run when the instructor soon realizes how time consuming is the facilitation of an online course. I will share assignments that demand manual grading and provide insights on how to allocate some of the grading to the LMS. At my institution, we are highly committed to the Blackboard platform. All in all, online courses are not a replacement for the classroom; instead, it empowers students and instructors through choice and increased access. The process of online course design is ever changing, as it should continue to evolve and improve in order to maintain robust online learning environments.