Faculty are key to the success of any academic or training program no matter the modality. It is essential that faculty be involved in the development and implementation of new course delivery methods and embrace them as part of their program and beneficial for the overall success of their students.
Faculty are key to the success of any academic or training program no matter the modality. It is essential that faculty be involved in the development and implementation of new course delivery methods and embrace them as part of their program and beneficial for the overall success of their students. In a perfect world, faculty would initiate all changes but in a time of grants and system-wide initiatives, that is not always the case.
In this presentation, West Kentucky Community and Technical College will discuss the journey from resistance to acceptance to championing within the implementation of the EPIC grant with its Learn on Demand, competency-based courses.
We will share our challenges and our strategies to overcome concerns such as:
- Possible drop in enrollment in local classes
- Losing the close relationship with their students
- Students not well suited for online or Learn on Demand courses being placed in the courses.
- Concerns about overall program advising and students being placed in the wrong classes in order to successfully complete the program in a timely manner.
- Courses taught in the new format were not seen as being of the same quality as traditional online courses
- Balancing academic freedom with the requirement to use a template.
- Finding fully credentialed faculty to serve as instructors
- Inexperience with Competency Based Education (CBE)
- Limited exposure to Open Educational Resources (OER)
- Tight timelines
We will also share our early signs of success:
- Using OER in other courses
- WKCTC students who started in our LoD MIT courses, have not stayed with LoD.
- Student Learning Outcomes
- Strong enrollment numbers in other courses
- Only a small drop in enrollment in Learn by Term classes.
- Full-time faculty teaching means that they have been able to establish relationships with students.
- Higher pass rate since switching to full-time faculty as instructors
Session Goals:
- Faculty will learn strategies to apply from the start to be a good partner to instructional designers and project managers. This includes ways of insuring academic vigor within any new format is comparable to traditional formats.
- Administrators, project managers and instructional designers will learn strategies for addressing faculty concerns and clearly define roles within the project. This includes sharing the overall goals of the project and defining what support will be available.
- Faculty, administrators, project managers and instructional designers will learn strategies for using data to help revise courses, enhance student support and increase student success.