How to create strong communities of scholars and prepare instructors to succeed in online teaching environment? In this session we will showcase our Pathway Program -- a series of 5 online professional development courses -- and discuss how this program provides instructors with the knowledge, tools, and resources to help them create and deliver high-quality, accessible online courses.
Despite online learning continuing to thrive over the decades, literatures suggest that providing effective training to prepare faculty for online course design and teaching can be especially challenging. Many types of training or methods of faculty online teaching assistance have been identified and utilized, such one-on-one consultation, f2f workshops, or online workshops. However, not every method is tuned to faculty needs. The topic on preparing faculty for online teaching can be vast, with common ones including how to use a learning management system, online pedagogy and course design, application of technological tools, and university policies or logistics. How should we select design workshop formats and fully address faculty needs while modeling the best practice of online teaching, course design, and quality assurance? We believe that a comprehensive and systematically designed online faulty develop program might be the best approach. In this session, we will introduce our faculty professional development program---Pathway to Online Master Instructor.
The primary goal of the program is to improve the instructor’s online teaching skills, course design competence, and equip them with knowledge of ADA compliance as well as quality assurance tools. The program is composed of the following 5 online courses:
- Online Teaching Certificate (4-week Course)
- Online Course Design Certificate (8-week course)
- ADA Compliance and Online Courses (5-week course)
- Applying the Quality Matters Rubric Workshop (2-week online course or one-day f2f workshop)
- Quality Matters Peer Reviewer Course (3-week course)
Upon completion of all five courses in the program, faculty are recognized as Master Online Instructors. Since the first course’s development in 2014, the program has been administered for up to 5 year and has been continuously revised and improved along the way.
What are the unique contents and features of each course? What challenges did we face in the program design process? How did we deal with faculty Buy-in during the implementation phase? How did we model the best practice and ask participants to play different roles in each course to better understand online learning environment? What significant changes did we make to ensure the overall quality of the program? How did participants perceive the overall learning experience in this program? You will learn the answers by attending this session, but most importantly, you will have opportunity to discuss and share your stories about preparing faculty teaching online as well.
Level of Participation:
This session is structured as a traditional presentation. Presenter will discuss the background of the Pathway Program, showcase the course designs and discuss strategies, tips and tricks of implementing the program, and report data and feedback collected from participants. At the end of the presentation, attendees will have time to ask questions and share their best practices of preparing instructors teaching online effectively.
Session Goals:
Showcase the course design of the 3 major in-house developed courses, identify challenges, solutions, and best strategies in designing and implementing a professional development program that can be incorporated in similar institutions.