Good course design is paramount to the academic outcomes of students in online classes, but what role do instructors have in student success once an online course is developed? Teaching, evaluating, and mentoring new online instructors on pedagogy is a critical, and missing, component in online education today.
Good course design is paramount to the academic outcomes of students in online classes, but what role do instructors have in student success once an online course is developed? As more programs utilize a master course model, instructors are responsible for teaching only. This is particularly true among professional programs where coursework is approved or verified by accrediting bodies (e.g., Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education; Council on Social Work Education) and there are minimal changes an instructor can make to course content as a result. Most, if not all, evaluations of online courses examine the design only, such as the Quality Matters Rubric (MarylandOnline, 2018). Therefore, the only measure of online instructor effectiveness are student evaluations. Student evaluations are subjective measures of instructor performance and may not accurately reflect the engagement and effective facilitation of the instructor based on student biases, such as student motivation and expected grades (Cashin, 1988).
With certainty it can be stated that student learning is enhanced with instructor engagement in online environments, particularly in relation to assessment feedback. However, there is limited information available on the instructor behaviors that most influence student learning. Furthermore, the training of new online instructors appears to be limited to course design as opposed to their role as learning facilitators. Teaching, evaluating, and mentoring new online instructors on pedagogy is a critical, and missing, component in online education today.
As a way to address this, a fully online asynchronous graduate program using a master course model initiated a training and mentoring program for new online instructors. These new instructors were three doctoral students entering their second year, four entering their third year, and one entering his fourth year of an Applied Behavior Analysis program. Each had at least one semester each of undergraduate, face-to-face teaching experience as a teaching assistant and as an instructor of record. Four instructors had taught one to three online courses previously in the program, but were still considered novice instructors (Palloff & Pratt, 2011).
The university required all online instructors to complete a 5-week certification course aimed at increasing instructor knowledge of online course design using the learning management platform, Canvas. New instructors were required to complete this training step first during the semester prior to teaching. Once certified, instructors were enrolled in an online training course that addressed pedagogy and responsibilities while teaching in the program. The training course consisted of reading several research articles about online instruction and a program-specific online instructor manual. It also included watching a video lecture, answering six true/false questions while watching the lecture, reviewing the answer key, and taking a 10-question quiz based on the reading and lecture. Instructors had two attempts to earn 90% or better on the quiz. If this criterion was not met, the instructor needed to request an appointment with the mentor for remedial training and assessment. No instructor needed remedial training and assessment.
Having passed the training course, instructors were given access to the course he or she would teach in the coming semester. Instructors were required to read the syllabus, review the course content, and speak with the mentor briefly to address questions before the semester started. After the semester started, all instructors met bi-weekly as a large group with the mentor to discuss successes and challenges experienced as an instructor in an online course. Part of the ongoing mentoring included two self-evaluations of engagement in the course, a peer evaluation, and a mentor evaluation. The outcomes of the evaluations were discussed with the instructor as a way to reinforce excellent performance and correct any areas of weakness in their teaching. These evaluations assessed, among other things, frequency of announcements and discussion board posts, quality of course and module introduction videos, and latency to feedback on assessments.
Initial evaluation of this training program indicates there is more instructor engagement in online courses as compared to courses taught in previous semesters. Additionally, instructors reported a high level of satisfaction with the training, particularly meeting as a large group given the different perspectives on a particular issue. This training and mentoring program has now expanded to include novice faculty from other programs on campus, which suggests the possibility of scaling up this professional development experience for new online instructors with minimal financial costs to departments. Mentor time is considered the biggest limitation to the successful implementation of this program when considering the regular meetings and evaluations of instructors. However, the overall impact of having highly trained online instructors fluent in facilitating student learning cannot be overstated. This is particularly true when looking to the future of higher education, with more online coursework available to students. Training and mentoring new online instructors will aid in overcoming some of the barriers associated with teaching online, such as the resistance of faculty who are unfamiliar with the repertoire of skills needed to successfully teach students in the online environment (Palloff & Pratt, 2011).
Given this is an innovative program, session attendees will have several opportunities to engage with the material. First, electronic polls will be used at several points to identify audience agreement or disagreement with the different aspects of training and the evaluations, specifically the items used to evaluate instructor performance. Additionally, the audience will provide verbal input in small groups and in the large group in relation to the replicability and scalability of this program in higher education settings.
By the end of this presentation, the audience will have seen an example of an online training and mentoring program for new online instructors. As a result, learners will be able to identify the various components of the training, evaluation, and ongoing mentoring that took place and be able to describe the benefits and drawbacks in implementing this type of professional development in colleges and universities with online courses. Finally, learners will be able to evaluate the replicability and scalability of a training and mentoring program like this.