This session will provide an overview of the Online Competencies Curriculum (OCC) project, including planning, piloting, implementation, and assessment. We share “lessons learned” from a multi-institutional digital learning project. The OCC modules are meant to accompany face to face educational experiences and be applicable across multiple courses and disciplines.
The Online Compentencies Curriculum is a three-year Teagle Foundation-funded project to develop a set of modules in three emerging and evolving competency areas (Information Fluency, Communication and Presentation Skills, and Technological Adaptability). These competencies are part of essential competencies articulated in AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) learning outcomes, as well as the Lumina Foundation’s Degree Qualifications Profile 2.0 (DQP). The modules are meant to be applicable across multiple courses and disciplines, helping students make connections between courses as well as give them skills that will help them beyond their degree.
This project was developed collaboratively across four institutions (Augustana College, Elmhurst College, Illinois Wesleyan University, and St. Norbert College ) that are part of the BLAISE Consortium, a consortium formed across six institutions in 2013 to help each other shape curriculum and pedagogies for the 21st Century specifically for liberal arts institutions. Intended goals for this project were at both the project level and competency/learning module level. They included development of learning modules that are useful for faculty and successfully integrated into a broad range of courses across disciplines and institutions, a collaborative multidisciplinary and multi-institutional faculty-led development process, and the the dissemination of information (including the OCC modules) across the participating campuses and within the broader liberal arts community.
We currently are in the third and final year of the project, and have developed, piloted, assessed, and revised 11 online modules across the three competency areas. During the 2016-17 academic year, the revised modules will be made available to all faculty at our four institutions, and project leaders are beginning to explore the possibility of sharing the modules with liberal arts institutions outside our consortium. In our presentation, we will share some of the most successful modules created for the project and reflect upon the successes, surprises, and challenges of four liberal arts institutions working collaboratively on a digital learning project.
Session attendees will learn about the Online Competencies Curriculum modules, which may be useful tools for faculty seeking project-related learning outcomes on their own campuses. Additionally, they’ll learn about strategies and tools for assessing learning outcomes of online modules. Finally, attendees will gain insights into the benefits and potential pitfalls of multi-institution collaborations for digital pedagogy projects.