For years UCF faculty certified to teach online have been requesting an opportunity for skill advancement. Based on the results of a participant survey, a professional course was created and piloted. This session will share the survey and pilot results, participant feedback, plus a review of the final content.
The goal of this session is to share the survey and pilot course results, learning experiences and final outcomes based on the development and delivery of an advanced professional development opportunity for seasoned online faculty at the University of Central Florida (UCF). In order to be certified to teach online at UCF, faculty must first complete a blended course called IDL6543. Over the years these graduates, dating as far back as 1998, have often expressed an interest in a continuing educational opportunity for skill advancement after their graduation from IDL6543 and after they have delivered an online course (M/Blended or W/Online delivery mode). As for the preferred topics and delivery method that had been requested for this type of course, it had been information informally collected by the UCF Instructional Design Team and the Center for Distributed Learning (CDL) Executives. To verify the need and requested topics for this new course, a project team was created to investigate course options. This team’s first task was to create and distribute a survey to these IDL6543 graduates. Results of this survey plus additional input from internal project stakeholders was leveraged to create this new faculty development course for UCF’s certified online faculty. These findings will be shared with session participants.
The results were used to create a six-week blended course called IDL7000. This course includes a review of imperative content areas such as copyright, intellectual property, FERPA and accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as they relate to online course materials plus instructional resources that can be used to enhance their online courses. These instructional resources range from CDL services (e.g., video, graphics) to UCF services (e.g., Library services, UCF Writing Center) and to external resources (e.g., Online Education Resources, YouTube, Twitter). This course also provides readings, discussions, and activities which are designed to enable participants to construct and implement new course content.
IDL7000 was piloted in Fall 2015 and Spring 2016. A total of nine participants completed the course with several course projects being developed for delivery in their current online courses. Facilitators collected formal feedback from the participants to apply to future deliveries of IDL7000. Feedback was collected and will be applied to the actual Fall 2016 release of the course. Stakeholders such as the ID Team and CDL Executive team were also informally interviewed. IDs requested that participants’ defined IDL7000 course projects be limited to a set of tasks that could be completed during the delivery of the IDL7000 six-week course. CDL Executive team feedback was related to the scalability and sustainability of the course logistics such as delivering the professional development course only once per year. This feedback will be shared and discussed with conference participants.
Currently the feedback from all stakeholders is being applied. The official course is set to be delivered in Fall 2016. This will conclude the tasks of the IDL7000 project team and the course will be managed and sustained by the professional development ID team lead. The new fall schedule and proposed curriculum will be reviewed with the audience participants.
Are your faculty ready for advanced professional development opportunities? Join us to learn about our experiences and to discuss your plans and needs for your faculty.