Creating and teaching online courses requires faculty to be experts in pedagogy and technology as well as in their discipline. Join our panel for a dynamic conversation on ways to provide collaboration, support, and professional development for online faculty to create quality learning experiences in the online environment.
Faculty in a K-12 and higher educational settings are considered specialists in their field. However, their field of expertise is often not related to pedagogy, educational technology, or instructional design. With the rapid growth and evolution of educational technology tools and the pressure for more quality online courses, faculty are constantly asked to be more than experts in their field to create and teach online courses. With these additional demands, administrators and online learning teams need to equip faculty to be successful in their courses by providing effective and practical professional development, as well as support. What would it take for a majority of faculty to agree that online courses are same or better quality, rather than (on average) 30%, per a 2018 Inside Higher Education survey of faculty attitudes on technology?
Hear from practitioners in three different, yet related, environments. A Sr. Instructional Designer from a private university with a campus dedicated to online and distance learning, an Academic Technology Service Director at a private university and former Director of Information Technology at a K12 school, and a Head of Academic Services for an organization serving online programs of over eighty universities and colleges globally.
In this panel presentation, we will share experiences, successes, and challenges related to training, support, and collaboration for online faculty and course developers. While the panelists will share their experience, this session is a conversation and information exchange. We are inviting you to come with your ideas and experiences of what has worked, or hasn’t worked, at your institution to support the professional growth of your online faculty. We’ll elicit feedback and contributions from the audience using an interactive polling tool, along with partaking in an open conversation.
Our first area of consideration will be the subject areas needed for success teaching online. To what extent have these requirements changed in the last few years with the development of more do-it-yourself authoring tools? Or to what extent are core design best practices still the same? What are some best practices that faculty use to engage students in their online courses?
Our second area of consideration will be the types of support for faculty teaching online. To what extent can and should faculty be self-sufficient with respect to the design and development of online courses, and to what extent should on-campus instructional designers and/or technology experts exert a more pro-active role in guiding or supporting development? Are different models appropriate for different faculty and, if so, how do you decide which path is best for whom? What are some ways to build consensus around what it takes to create “good” and, if needed, a business case for doing so?
Our third area of consideration is innovation and continuous improvement of online courses. What are some ways to systematically and continually improve courses after they have been taught? Beyond the basics of online course development, what are some ways to apply empirically-based approaches and systematically gather results of a course re-design?
Key takeaways from this discussion include suggested solutions for supporting online faculty in the areas of technology and pedagogical practices to create and teach quality online courses.