Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement

Designing an online course shares many of the same elements and processes that go into designing a traditional face-to-face course, however the online environment brings a unique set of challenges that require special attention and a different approach.

Faculty charged with developing their own online courses can find learning the new technology particularly frustrating, and those who are not early adopters to technology might resist the process entirely. Many institutions are realizing that the development and delivery of online courses is an increasingly complicated process, requiring both a specialized pedagogy and a technological expertise – and it’s rare to find both qualifications in the same person.

In the article “The Collaborative Approach to Developing Online Courses,” the author explains how one university adopted a centralized and standardized approach to the design, development, and management of online programs that respects the talents of both instructional designers and faculty by allowing each to work in their own specialty. As a result, courses have the same quality standards and a more consistent look and feel.

Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement

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This 20-page special report features eight articles pulled from the pages of Distance Education Report, and covers a variety of different aspects of online course design. Take a look at the articles you will find in the report:

• The Collaborative Approach to Developing Online Courses
• Building Course Quality Systematically
• Who Ya Gonna Call When a Course Needs Help?
• Developing a Course Maintenance Process for Your Online Courses
• What Learning Object Repositories Mean for Your Program
• Practice Simple and Effective Course Design—Use the Learning Experiences Framework
• Is There Too Much Interaction in Your Courses?
• Rapid Online Course Design: Course Development in Days

Whether you’re developing a new online course from scratch, or updating one that’s starting to show its age, this report will give you new ideas to consider.

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Faculty Focus contains a wealth of valuable material on all of the key issues that matter to today’s top faculty and administrators. It’s packed with strategies, tips, and other information you can use on the topics that impact your students, your school, and your work, including:

• Student Engagement
• Instructional Design
• Online Education
• Classroom Management
• Educational Assessment
• Teaching with Technology
• Faculty Development
• Curriculum Development
• Trends in Higher Education
• And much, much more.

Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement

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Ensuring Online Program Quality with the eQuality Model

The standards are different for online programs. That’s what everyone thinks, so it might as well be true. Only it isn’t true. Your stakeholders don’t have a separate set of expectations for online programs, and neither do you. Proving it, though, can be challenging without a comprehensive program that continuously monitors and improves quality.

You don’t have to secretly worry that the critics are right, or wonder whether your online programs match the quality and integrity of your on-the-ground courses. You can know—and prove with certainty—that any doubters are wrong.

What you need, however, is a data-driven continuous process improvement model that uses performance measures and stakeholder feedback to ensure that student success and academic integrity meet institutional requirements. In other words, you need the eQuality Model.

The eQuality Model is a highly adaptable program designed to continuously improve the quality and integrity of online and distance education learning. You can learn how to adapt this model and develop your own comprehensive quality program in Ensuring Online Program Quality with the eQuality Model.

The eQuality model is based on a four-pillar approach that uses specific tools and strategies to evaluate and improve quality in courses, instruction, support, and administration. By adopting and adhering to the four-pillar model, colleges and universities can maintain academic integrity and rigor while ensuring the best possible student and faculty experience.

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This 38-page white paper explains how to develop and implement a comprehensive quality program at your institution. The report gives you the tools and the insight to gather data, analyze it, and apply it to improve any or all of the four quality components. Specifically, you will learn to:

• Identify and involve all stakeholders;
• Use end-of-course critiques, student complaints, student success rates, syllabus reviews, course readiness checks, and course design checklists to measure and improve course quality;
• Use student feedback, academic appeals, course fill rates, student withdrawal and success rates, and course observations to ensure quality instruction;
• Identify and implement student, staff, and faculty support functions;
• Design and implement focus groups to generate information about staff, faculty, and student support needs;
• Gather, analyze, and apply data to enable administration to improve the online experience for students, faculty, and staff; and
• Identify overall data-collection needs and resources.

To further assist you in developing your own comprehensive quality program, this white paper also provides actual examples of eQuality tools used at Florida State College. The valuable resources you can modify and adapt to your institution include the following:

• Course quality checklist
• Syllabus review checklist
• Course readiness checklist
• Course observation guide
• Sample student end-of-course critique report and analysis
• Instructional quality data collection points matrix

Cost

You can download the PDF of this white paper, or get the print version mailed to you.

A Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to load the white paper onto the institution’s password-protected internal web site for unlimited access by members of the campus community.

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Based on the popular online seminar led by Richard Schilke, Ed.D., associate dean for online Liberal Arts and Sciences at the Open Campus of Florida State College at Jacksonville, Ensuring Online Program Quality with the eQuality Model will serve as a valuable resource to anyone looking to maintain or improve the quality of their distance learning programs. It’s intended for distance learning administrators, course designers, program managers, faculty, and institutional accreditation staff.

As the online student population continues its double-digit growth rate, and some organizations are projecting that by 2020 students will take up to 60 percent of their courses online, forward-thinking higher education institutions are looking for new approaches to student engagement and retention to meet the needs of the online student population. It is a population that is often made up of students from different generations, ethnic backgrounds, professional experiences, and family responsibilities.

One institution that is taking an innovative approach to online student engagement is Drexel University, which has won awards for its online first-year experience program in its fully online Master of Science in Higher Education (MSHE) Program.

“Some of the online students will never set foot on the Drexel campus but they have a right to the same college experience as a person living on campus in a residence hall,” said David A. Ruth, PhD, dean of students at Drexel. “While some data might suggest that online students don’t really want that level of engagement or participation, we have found that if you invite them, they will come. … We want our students—no matter where they are, no matter what campus or what format—to feel and know they are part of the Drexel experience.”

In the online seminar Retaining Online Students with a First-Year Experience Program, Ruth and Kristen Betts, EdD, an associate clinical professor in the Goodwin College of Professional Studies at Drexel University, shared some program best practices for “bringing the campus” to the online students.

“We focused on the concept of Online Human Touch and how can we personalize the learning experience for that student,” said Betts. “What we’ve found through our research is students are more likely to persist in their online courses if they’re engaged in and outside of their courses and the educational experience is personalized.”

According to Betts, this involves much more than simply having students participate in discussion boards, communicate with faculty via email, or work in online groups. The Online Human Touch concept is a holistic approach that combines the efforts of the program director, faculty, adjunct faculty, and staff developing a personal connection between Drexel and each student.

For example, each student who’s accepted receives a congratulatory phone call from the program director or academic adviser welcoming him or her to the program. The students then go through an online orientation where the presenters include the Dean of Students and faculty, as well as representatives from the writing center, library, support services, financial aid, disability services and student life.

During week two, a time when many new online students start to feel overwhelmed, the program hosts a virtual tea party. Students receive in the mail a signed invitation with a sachet of tea inviting them to join their classmates for an informal chat with instructors. Typically, 75 to 80 percent of the students attend the virtual tea.

The faculty member’s point was well taken, and over the years Ragan and others on various committees at Penn State have worked to define:

Core competencies for online teaching success – Currently there are 28 competencies across the three main topic areas of technology, course administration, and pedagogy.

Online instructors’ performance expectations – Currently there are eight key performance expectations and a description of the associated behaviors.

Performance metrics – Although not all of the behaviors lend themselves to metrics, items such as feedback, availability and communication can be quantified.

“The online performance expectations are shared with online instructors as both a way to set the context for their online teaching experience and as a tool to help balance their own teaching expectations,” Ragan said. “They have been developed from almost 15 years of experience, best practices research, observations of what good instructors do, and student feedback.”

During the recent online video seminar Setting Expectations for Online Instructor Performance, Ragan explained the importance of defining expectations for the online classroom, as well as how to keep new instructors from getting overwhelmed.

Ragan also provided an overview of the eight performance expectations developed by the Penn State World Campus Performance Expectations Committee, and encouraged participants to adapt the categories and associated behaviors to the culture of their specific college or unit.

The online instructor performance expectations he discussed are:

1. Technology Access
The instructor is responsible for meeting the same technology requirements as required for students.

The instructor is expected to:

• Secure access to a high-speed bandwidth connection for class activities.
• Test all course-related technology prior to the start of the course.

2. Course Management and Instruction
The instructor is responsible for managing and teaching the class from start to finish.

The instructor is expected to:

• Follow the established and published course schedule.
• Conduct (that is, “teach”) the course within the scheduled time frame.
• Make and communicate schedule adjustments as necessary.
• Provide each student equal opportunity to succeed.

3. Preparation
The instructor is responsible for assuring that they possess the required skills and competencies for teaching online.

The instructor is expected to:

• Be operationally proficient in the course technology.
• Be prepared with the skills to teach online.
• Be able to complete the required administrative tasks necessary to complete the course.

4. Course Familiarity
The instructor is responsible for being adequately familiar with the online course.

The instructor is expected to:

• Be familiar with the syllabus including course milestones, due dates and critical course activities.
• Make changes to the syllabus as necessary and communicate the changes to the students.
• Review and be familiar with the course content.
• Identify and report inaccurate course content, confusing information and/or instructions, broken links, and other course design issues.
• Review the course teaching guide to gain an understanding of the intent/context of the course such as the author’s teaching philosophy, content, learning activities, and assessments.

5. Availability
The instructor is required to be available to the online learner for the duration of the course.

The instructor is expected to:

• Regularly access the online course.
• Notify students and appropriate administrative units if unable to log in to the course.

6. Communication
The online instructor is responsible for managing course–related communications.

The instructor is expected to:

• Clearly communicate student expectations.
• Communicate instructor class schedule and access.
• Actively participate in course-related discussions and activities where appropriate.

7. Feedback
The online instructor is responsible communicating with and providing feedback to students.

The instructor is expected to:

• Provide prompt feedback.
• Inform the learner of when they can expect a response if the instructor cannot provide a detailed response within 12 hours.
• Provide clear and concise feedback to explain the degree to which the student is achieving the course/lesson outcomes.
• Communicate to students when they can expect to receive graded feedback on assignments and exams.

8. Documentation & Record Keeping
The online instructor is responsible for maintaining records of course transactions and communications.

The instructor is expected to:

• Keep a record of communications with students including when other modes of communications are used.
• Record and communicate student progress information such as assignment and quiz grades.
• Post the final course grade promptly.

“The more complex the task, the more rich the media necessary to communicate,” said Jill Schiefelbein, an online instructor at Arizona State University.

For example, if you want to remind students that their paper is due by 11:59 pm on Tuesday, then that’s very straightforward and can be done with plain text. However, if you need to explain a difficult concept to your class, you may want to consider adding some graphics, or even audio and video elements to the instruction.

In the recent online video seminar Five Ways to Improve Interaction in Your Online Courses, Schiefelbein demonstrated how she uses different media to communicate with her students; improving learner engagement and satisfaction.

1. Text and Images: This is the first level of the media richness continuum, and it’s one that most everyone has mastered. But beyond plain text, simple formatting enhancements with bullets, bold, color, hyperlinks, and images can improve readability and increase understanding.
2. Audio: Adding audio instructions or commentary helps you meet the needs of auditory learners, and often adds interest to the content. Schiefelbein said she often creates an audio recording of housekeeping tasks, such as deadline reminders, as well as to review what was covered the previous session. She also uses the Wimba Voice Board to create an audio-based discussion board which students use to discuss topics and reply to posts.
3. Audio Visual: Adding audio narration to PowerPoint slides helps keep students engaged and allows instructors to inject a bit of their personality into the course, said Schiefelbein.
4. Video: Although not everyone is comfortable capturing a video of themselves, video helps make concepts more perceptible and is a powerful way to communicate. Schiefelbein provided an example of how she uses video to demonstrate for students what she’s looking for in the mediated speech assignment she’s giving them.
5. Synchronous Communication: Giving students opportunities for real-time interaction adds a final layer of depth and clarity to communication and is an effective way to build community in the online classroom. Although not every student can attend a live session, most synchronous tools have an archiving function, which allows students to catch up on what they missed.

During the seminar, Schiefelbein also provided suggestions for getting shy students to embrace audio and video assignments, as well as how to acclimate adult learners who may not be as adept with technology tools as traditional-aged college students.

Setting Expectations for Online Instructor Performance

When it comes to instruction, just “winging it” isn’t any more acceptable in an online classroom than it is in a traditional one. Yet, in the absence of any guidelines or best practices, that’s precisely what many instructors do.

As more and more educators enter online teaching, they find themselves having to rethink classroom dynamics. Things as basic as accessing students, responding to questions, and determining how much time to spend teaching all have to be re-examined.

If instructors reach their own conclusions about these issues, you’ll have a program that’s inconsistent at best, unmanageable at worst. It’s far better if you establish clear guidelines and expectations that every instructor can follow. One of the most respected voices in distance education will show you how to do so, during a 90 minute online video seminar.

In Setting Expectations for Online Instructor Performance, Lawrence C. Ragan, PhD., director of Penn State’s acclaimed World Campus program, shares 12 key areas in which you should be establishing concrete, measurable guidelines for instructors. They include:

• the frequency with which instructors access courses
• the response time to student questions
• the instructor’s presence in the online classroom
• the amount of time spent actually teaching

Here’s a brief clip from the seminar:

During the presentation, Dr. Ragan also provides metrics to use in assessing teacher performance, a checklist of critical online teaching competencies, and other resources. You’ll come away with a clear roadmap for creating your own standards based on the unique needs of your institution and your program.

Order the CD + Transcript

When you order the recording of this seminar on CD, you’ll also receive a PDF of the seminar transcript, all for the same price as attending the seminar live.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal web site for unlimited access by members of the campus community.

Who will benefit?

• Lead Faculty
• Instructional Designers
• Faculty Developers
• Directors of Distance Education
• Deans
• Academic Department Chairs
• Institutional Evaluators/Researchers

See how carefully developed guidelines can strengthen your instructors’ classroom performance, increase student satisfaction, and enhance your program’s reputation.

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New for 2011! A Discussion Guide for Facilitators.
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar now includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

1. Teaching and Learning

• State objectives, expectations, and policies
• Establish communication rules and group decision-making norms
• Give prompt, effective feedback

“I believe that you absolutely have to have an understanding of the pedagogy in order to be successful. If you try to map over what worked for you in the classroom and you don’t make the accommodations – not that that was a bad thing, but if you don’t make the accommodations and understand the dynamics of how it is now going to occur in the online classroom – you’re going to struggle and I think your students are going to struggle. So I think that is really a critical dimension of being able to understand, and conceptualize, and manage that teaching and learning sphere. It’s very, very important.”

2. Technology Aptitude

• Know the LMS
• Seek technology assistance
• Be creative and flexible

“If I don’t make you successful with the foundation tools that you’re working with – that is, the learning management system, or if you’re using Web 2.0 technologies, or whatever the environment might be – it might be Illuminate Live or it might be Connect Pro – but if you’re not facile in those technologies, you are going to struggle and your students are going to struggle. So regardless of what tools are selected, I think the second largest category of competencies has to be around the technology.”

3. Classroom Administration/ Management

• Check and manage roster
• Submit grades according to University policy
• Manage drop/adds

“There are some non-negotiables in this teaching and learning process. For the institution, for example, a non-negotiable is the fact that you are able to submit grades on time and that students are able to see their progress as they move through the course, or that you’re able to manage the drop-add process. All of the mechanics, I think, have become so innate in us in the face-to-face environment that when we move to the online environment we sometimes forget that.”

4. Faculty Workload Management

• Define time frames
• Develop schedule and responsibilities
• Communicate expectations

“In listening to faculty, a critical element of their success is how they manage their time. I would argue that I can’t help you manage your time until you’ve had some experience. A little bit like attitude, I can probably give you some suggestions of things. I can suggest to you, for example, that you set defined timeframes during the day when you’re going to be teaching online, and that you try to prevent the course from bleeding into your home life, and your recreation life, and your vacation. I know none of you has ever done this, but sometimes faculty take their computers on family vacations and they’re still teaching their course. And I’m not sure what I would say to that one, except you’ve got to be careful; you have to be able to define those boundaries about when you’re teaching online and when you’re not.”

5. Building Community

• Foster dialog and interaction
• Provide for “space” for instructional & social interactions

“The need for the instructor to be able to craft this learning space where people feel valued and they’re contributing to it. Again, I would agree that that’s really, really important, and it’s certainly a potential outcome of a well-designed learning space. We have these tools, right, that allow us to do this, so why wouldn’t we take advantage of it?”

Excerpted from “Asking the Question: Rate the core competencies for online teaching.” Distance Education Report, 13.22 (2009): 5.

What Distance Ed Administrators Must Know About the Law

The best way to handle a legal problem in your online program is to avoid it in the first place. This white paper explains the proactive steps you need to take now to protect your institution and yourself.

A professor wants to broadcast a recorded television program to students online. Is this allowable?

A student writes insulting comments about his professor in an online learning management system. Can you remove or punish him?

A faculty member wants to sell the online course materials she produced at your college to a publishing house. Can you stop her?

These are all examples of sticky legal situations that most college administrators probably never anticipated having to face.

Because online education is a new and evolving area, difficult, unforeseen situations are emerging. The familiar rules that apply in the face-to-face classroom may not be sufficient for navigating novel legal hazards in a distance education program.

In What Distance Educators Must Know About the Law, you will discover the answers to these tricky legal questions, and more.

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This 41-page white paper is packed with useful, actionable information and guidance on how to protect your school from a costly legal challenge, including:

• ADA implications of online programming
• Writing effective institutional policies to protect against legal actions
• Why administrators should review online postings to ensure compliance
• What faculty members need to know about online copyright violations
• The need for thorough training of online faculty
• The Fair Use Four-Point test
• How to guard against student computer misuse
• Harassment, defamation, and invasion of privacy online risks
• Meeting new verification requirements of online education
• Avoiding copyright infringement with student-produced work
• Sample policies on copyrights and computer use

When you add an online component to your school’s offerings, you need to rethink your legal risk management. The hazards are manageable, with informed action.

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Don’t wait for a lawsuit to strike your distance education programming. Take action today to prevent a costly legal challenge from hitting your campus by investing in What Distance Ed Administrators Must Know About the Lawr today.

This white paper is written specifically for online professionals, including:

• Online educators
• Distance education professionals
• Campus administrators
• Legal affairs

This report will make you aware of the main legal risks to address now and serve as a valuable reference guide as questions arise in the future.

Cost

You can download the PDF of this white paper, or get the print version mailed to you.

A Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to load the white paper onto the institution’s password-protected internal web site for unlimited access by members of the campus community.

What Distance Ed Administrators Must Know About the Law is based on a seminar originally delivered on July 27, 2010 by Debi Moon, J.D., and Rob Jenkins, M.S. Debi Moon has served as the Assistant Vice President of Educational Affairs at Georgia Perimeter College and as the Director of the Center for Distance Learning. Rob Jenkins is an Associate Professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College and is well known as the author of the popular “Two-Year Track” columns for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Online Courses: Step-by-Step

Eager to teach online, but dreading the “tech” part? Relax … this new program picks up where on-campus training leaves off and will help any faculty member make the transition, comfortably and confidently!

A three-part, self-paced online course • $299

There’s been a steady migration, if not an outright stampede, into the online classroom in recent years. Many of your colleagues are teaching there now.

What about you? Are you interested in bringing your passion for teaching into the online classroom, but are uncertain how to get there? Are you concerned about a long and painful learning curve? Or are you teaching online now but are finding the experience is less than what you expected?

If so, you’ll be pleased to discover there’s an online program developed especially for you. It’s called Online Courses: Step-by-Step, and it will help make your transition to online teaching easier and more fulfilling than you ever thought possible.

It’s focused, it’s fast, it’s practical, and it’s virtually painless.

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To be successful in the online classroom, you don’t need to be a technology whiz … you don’t need to be a programmer … you don’t need a sophisticated understanding of the online world. You simply need to be a committed educator interested in engaging students in exciting new ways.

Organized into three convenient modules, Online Courses: Step-by-Step covers:

Module One: Online Pedagogy
Discover how teaching methods differ between the traditional and online classrooms. You’ll get an in-depth look at:

• The history of the virtual classroom
• Best practices for online teaching
• Content delivery methods
• Class interaction and discussion
• ADA issues in online education
• And more

Module Two: Design & Assessing
See how to work with your instructional design team to put your course online. You’ll learn about:

• Reconceptualizing your course
• Guidelines for development
• Use of blogs, wikis and other social tools
• Integrating video and other media
• And more

Module Three: The Tools
Here you’ll learn about the tools you have at your disposal as an online educator, and how these tools can be applied to:

• Class discussion
• Assignments
• Quizzes
• Grading
• Peer communication
• Teacher-student communication

By program’s end, you’ll have the knowledge you need to get online, and the confidence that you’re doing it right.

Maximize your investment

The cost for this comprehensive program for one person is just $299, and the more people from your campus who sign up to take the course, the lower cost per person:

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The required course work consisted of a combination of six discussion topics, three short true/false and multiple-choice quizzes, three exams involving true/false and multiple-choice questions and essay topics, and one medium-length paper with options for revision.

Together, the various writing assignments for the course accounted for 70 percent of the final grade. At the end of the semester, the class median was 82.75 points and the mean was 81 out of 100 points. Three students scored A’s and two students failed the course. The grade distribution for the course was similar to the distribution when I taught the course in a traditional classroom setting. I felt that the extent of the learning that occurred in the online course was similar to what I had seen in the classroom.

To assess the impact of the streamed presentations on student learning, I reviewed the course record for each student of the number of visits and the total time spent visiting each of the content pages and correlated this with the student’s final course score. Ten students viewed nine or more of the 12 streamed presentations and a similar number of the accompanying narration transcripts. Fourteen students relied primarily on the transcripts of the narration while viewing only a few of the presentations. Four students relied primarily on the streamed presentations while viewing only a few of the accompanying transcripts. The students who studied both the streamed presentations and the transcripts of the narration had the highest overall scores, with a median of 86.25 and a mean of 86 out of 100 points. Those who relied primarily on the transcripts had a median score of 83.5 and a mean of 80 points. The students who relied primarily on the streamed presentations scored substantially lower, with a median of 73 and a mean of 71 points.

Although other factors could account for the higher scores of those students who studied both the streamed presentations and the transcripts, I think the results suggest that the presentations did enhance student learning when combined with the transcripts of the narration. The streamed presentations were not a replacement for text-based delivery of course content, as evidenced by the lower scores of those students who relied primarily on the presentations. The streamed presentations facilitated increased learning as compared to a text-only mode of delivering course content, but the presentations should be viewed as working in tandem with the text versions of that content.

Was it worth the time needed to add the bells and whistles? Yes.

Jerry Kapus is an associate professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Reprinted from Bells, Whistles, and Learning Online, Online Classroom, May 2009.

Streaming media in online courses
When I recently created an online course on the philosophy of religion, I was concerned with delivering the course content in a variety of ways that would enhance the students’ ability to understand it. In addition to primary readings, study guides, and written lecture notes, I created presentations for streaming over the Web that combined bulleted text with more elaborate narration of the presentation topic, and I made extensive use of images to visually illustrate and make apparent the meanings of the text and narration. I created 12 narrated slide presentations, ranging from 4.5 to 11 minutes and covering topics such as the problem of evil, the validity of religious experience, and faith and reason.

I used Camtasia to produce the presentations, because this software allows for easy editing of video and audio segments, easy conversion to a Flash format for streaming over the Web, and easy construction of downloadable MP3 files and files for podcasting. Although this presentation software is relatively easy to use, it still took me about eight hours to create my first four-and-a-half-minute presentation. This involved learning the software, conceptualizing and creating the presentation, editing it, converting it to a Flash format, and posting it to the course website. By the time I constructed my 12th presentation, I was able to produce a 10-minute presentation and have it posted to my course website in about three hours. The resulting presentations enabled the students to view and listen to the content as often as they wished, to jump to different spots in the presentations, and to advance forward or backward through the content.

Although I was glad to provide students with learning options that would appeal to those who preferred to learn through listening and through visual representation of ideas, I wondered if there would be increased learning benefits and whether these benefits would justify the time needed to produce the presentations. In order to assess this, I also posted a complete transcript of the narration for each presentation. With 31 students in the class, I expected that there would be a natural division between those students who preferred to learn the content through the streamed presentations, those who preferred the text-only versions, and those who would use both modes to learn the course content.

Was it worth the time needed to add the bells and whistles? We’ll answer that question in Thursday’s post.

Jerry Kapus is an associate professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Reprinted from Bells, Whistles, and Learning Online, Online Classroom, May 2009.

A Legal Primer for Online Instructors

It’s no secret that teaching online carries its own set of challenges, and not just in terms of pedagogy. Online instructors must be aware of legal issues as well, including copyright and intellectual property infringement, harassment, defamation and privacy issues. Step on one of these legal landmines in the online environment, and you could be in for a costly, embarrassing public legal battle.

You are eminently knowledgeable about your course content and the technical aspects of conducting online instruction. What do you know about the legal risks of online education?

If you’re like most faculty members, the answer is: not much. That’s because colleges often overlook liability concerns when implementing or expanding online offerings.

As online programs grow, so does the potential for legal liability. Some online programs are growing faster than the training available to support them.

Faculty members and administrators involved with distance education need to understand the legal ramifications of copyright infringement, intellectual property, online defamation, online harassment and other key issues so that they can protect themselves and their institution. Failure to do so can be costly—both financially and in terms of damaged reputations.

In A Legal Primer for Online Instructors, presenters Debi Moon, J.D. and Rob Jenkins, M.A. use real life examples to review avoidable legal hazards that online programs must address.

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In A Legal Primer for Online Instructors, presenters Debi Moon, J.D. and Rob Jenkins, M.A. will introduce faculty members and administrators to the top legal concerns of online programming. They will explain how to avoid the biggest legal mistakes and ways to safeguard your institution’s distance education offerings.

As a participant in this audio online seminar you will learn:
• Ways to protect your school’s reputation and finances from legal threats based on online programming
• What constitutes harassment and defamation, for faculty and for students
• Strategies for steering clear of legal problems online
• How to identify potential problem areas at your colleges or in your courses
• How to construct websites and course materials that conform to the law and to college policies
• Faculty rights when it comes to intellectual property creation
• Ways to safeguard course materials and other proprietary information
• Personal faculty liability in an online teaching environment
• How to create reasonable and responsible computer use policies
• How to review existing online material for potential copyright violations
• Effective strategies to avoid defamation or harassment problems

Who will benefit from this seminar?
This seminar is recommended for:
• Professors and instructors with online teaching responsibilities
• Department chairs
• Academic affairs administrators
• Faculty developers
• Distance education professionals
• Technical support staff
• Anyone else with an interest in avoiding potentially costly mistakes related to online courses!

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Teaching Online vs. F2F: 15 Differences That Affect Learning

There is a lot of online instruction taking place in higher education, but unfortunately not all of it is high quality. Creating a powerful and engaging online learning experience requires more than simply transferring existing course materials to an online format.

To harness the full power of online education, faculty members need to grasp the key differences that make online learning so unique and powerful. While some traditional instructors may believe that online instruction is a less effective way to teach, the reality is that online courses can offer many distinct advantages over their traditional classroom equivalents.

Online instruction varies dramatically in assessment alternatives and the ways in which students interact with course content. It can provide new models for faculty-student collaboration and improved ways of delivering feedback. The best aspects of online coursework can even promote deeper student understanding of material.

In Teaching Online vs. F2F: 15 Differences That Affect Learning, Dr. Ike Shibley of Penn State Berks leads novice and seasoned online instructors through a detailed discussion of the best ways to maximize online coursework delivery.

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This 90-minute, video online seminar covers:

• 15 important differences between online and face-to-face instruction
• The advantages of online teaching compared to F2F courses
• Effective teaching practices that align with online instruction
• Applying learner-centered approaches to online courses
• Why assessment is easier in an online course
• The advantages of online teaching compared to F2F teaching
• Productive aspects of online instruction to help guide course design
• Writing a first draft for an online course syllabus
• Which types of assignments, grading, and collaboration to emphasize
• Creating assessment instruments to measure student learning online

Budget and time constraints are making online instruction increasingly important on a growing number of campuses. Learn how to produce exceptional online courses by ordering a copy of this seminar today.

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Ensuring Online Program Quality with the eQuality Model

You know first-hand the challenges of delivering quality in online learning. What’s even more difficult is to measure quality in ways that not only help you understand shortcomings, but also provide a blueprint for online quality assurance.

No one has to tell you that online learning has been under the microscope lately. From the mainstream media to the political arena, everyone has questions about the quality of distance learning.

Enough with the questions. Now is the time to provide some answers — and improve your program in the process.

In this audio seminar, Ensuring Online Program Quality with the eQuality Model, Richard Schilke, EdD., associate dean for online Liberal Arts and Sciences at the Open Campus of Florida State College at Jacksonville, introduces you to a proven system for measuring and delivering quality in distance learning.

By the end of the seminar, you’ll be equipped with the skills to:

• Design a quality online course: You’ll discover the key quality elements required in an online course, and how to ensure it continuously improves.
• Use feedback to achieve optimal results: From analyzing feedback to identifying data collection needs, you’ll learn how to establish an ongoing response system.
• Allocate resources to ensure quality: You’ll learn how to identify student, staff, and faculty support requirements.

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This is more than a theoretical model. Throughout the seminar, you’ll see real-world examples of how the eQuality program improves quality in a number of different ways. You’ll also be given the resources and guidance to achieve the same results yourself.

Discover the Four Pillars of eQuality
The seminar begins with an overview of the eQuality model, which draws upon quality standards such as Total Quality Management and ISO9000.

You’re then introduced to the four pillars of the eQuality approach: Quality Courses, Quality Instruction, Quality Support, and Quality Administration.

The seminar includes a complete list of support documents. Formulated and refined through years of usage in the eQuality model, these tools will enable you to hit the ground running. They include:

• Course quality checklist
• Syllabus review checklist
• Course readiness checklist
• Course observation guide
• Sample student end-of-course critique report and analysis
• Instructional quality data collection points matrix

After hearing this 90-minute seminar, you’ll understand the eQuality model, and have the tools and direction to apply them to your own distance learning program. It’s an ongoing approach that will help you address quality as your online learning program grows.

Who will benefit:
This audio online seminar will be of interest to all higher education institutions with online programs. The model includes the flexibility to meet requirements of 2-year, 4-year and graduate programs.

Professionals who would be most interested in the presentation include:

• Distance learning administrators
• Online faculty
• Course designers
• Program managers
• Institutional accreditation staff

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Of course both assumptions are false, but where does that leave online instructors looking for guidance on the right way to teach an online course? A new research-based tool developed at Humboldt State University can help. Assessing Online Facilitation (AOF) can serve as a valuable guide to best practices in online teaching. It lists the four main roles of an online facilitator – pedagogical, managerial, social, and technical – and the associated tasks of each role. These tasks also are broken down according to when they should be done – before the course begins, during the first week of class, throughout the course, and during the last week of class.

In the recent online seminar Beyond Course Design: Planning for Successful Facilitation, two of the AOF’s developers, Joan Van Duzer, an instructional technologist at Humboldt State University, and Carole Robinson, instructional media producer for Pasadena City College, discussed many of the tasks outlined in the AOF. Some of the items in the checklist include:

Before the Course Begins:

• Pedagogical – Review past course evaluations to determine if enhancements for instructional strategies are required.
• Managerial – Send informational message including how to login, what materials are needed and how to get them, and who to contact for technical assistance.
• Technical – Update hyperlinks to remove dead or broken links.

During the First Week of Class:

• Pedagogical – Create an ice breaker activity related to a key course objective or concept.
• Managerial – Contact missing students to encourage their participation.
• Technical – Assist students with login/access difficulties.
• Social – Provide a personal and welcoming introduction to develop a personal presence.

Throughout the Course:

• Pedagogical – Summarize discussions.
• Managerial – Update the online grade book promptly after assignment due dates.
• Technical – Model competency with course management system delivery tools.
• Social – Organize collaborative projects to achieve strong social interaction.

During the Final Week of Class:

• Pedagogical – Provide feedback on final project.
• Managerial – Provide general information concerning the nature and format of the final assessment(s).
• Social – Send an email with a closing personal message to students.

The AOF is available for download here. The Facilitation Activity Record, an optional companion document to the AOF, which provides spaces for facilitators to make notes of what worked and what didn’t work when facilitating a course, and to flag issues that should be addressed before the course is offered again, can be downloaded here.

Q: Was the online AS in veterinary technology an online program from the beginning, or did it develop out of a face-to-face program?

Flora: The online program grew out of the face-to-face program. The distance program was accredited by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) in 1995, but the conversion process started in 1991. We were kind of online pioneers. Our online program was the first online vet tech program fully accredited by the AVMA.

Q: Was it hard to enlist the participation and support of faculty?

Flora: At first there was a little bit of uncertainty. It wasn’t really “I’m not going to do this,” but they were just wondering how it was going to work. But the faculty here really has and does embrace the online environment. The same faculty that teaches on campus teaches online; the courses are exactly the same, just delivered differently. And so the faculty has really embraced this and really has developed it to the point where it is now.

Q: Were there struggles getting the program accepted by the market?

Flora: Back then online instruction was just something that wasn’t being done. So the reputation of an online college wasn’t that great. People looked at it pretty skeptically. When the accreditation process went through at the AVMA they really took a pretty hard look at it, and that helped the acceptance.

I think the biggest milestone in acceptance was the performance of the online students on the national licensing test. The online students consistently score a good standard deviation above the on-campus students. The first students would have taken the test in ’94/’95. That’s when you could start comparing performance on a standardized test. We’ve used the fact that our online students perform so well to market the course to prospective students. We still make sure students are aware of that right from the start.

Q: Do you regularly revise the curriculum?

Flora: Yes, we’re continually looking at the curriculum because veterinary medicine is changing so rapidly. Part of what we have to do is make sure we maintain the requirements to be accredited by the American Veterinary Medical Association. They put out the things that an accredited program has to cover. Our faculty’s really good about staying current, altering courses every semester for the new information that’s out there. It changes from semester to semester; nothing’s static at all.

Q: What were some of the aspects of the program cited by Sloan-C in presenting the award?

Flora: Student performance was a big one. And then they went in to look at the courses and look at the technology that was being used. That was the other big thing that they liked about it. We do a lot of audio chats instead of texting. And with reusable learning objects, our instructors have gone in and created video presentations especially for the lab classes. They might be talking about analyzing blood samples where they can narrate over slides of what they’re instructing about, and they are able to highlight different areas of the slides.

Or they can do video over their PowerPoint so that as they instruct on an abnormality in one of the white blood cell lines, the students can come into the class, open up that video presentation, listen to the instructor talk about the cells, and at the same time they’re talking about it, the technology gives them the capability of taking a cell off the slide, enlarging it, and highlighting the different areas of the cell that they’re talking about as they instruct the students.

Q: How do you train your instructors to teach online?

Flora: The College has what’s called the Web and Instructional Technology Services [WITS] Department, and they’ve created some great instructor training modules that instructors can go through at their own pace online, where it talks about the online environment, the college in general, and then goes through the capabilities of our course management system, in particular.

We have a very stable faculty. We may bring one or two adjuncts a year, but other than that we’ve had the same faculty teaching for several years now. We’re very fortunate there. We have eight full-time professors in the AS program and we have twelve adjuncts.

The same training program is effective for adjuncts, but we also always pair them with experienced instructors so they always have that experienced instructor in the background to monitor what goes on in the course or to answer questions or help when needed. So it’s kind of a mentor relationship for the first couple of semesters.

Results of the 2009 Managing Online Education Survey, a collaborative initiative of the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET) and The Campus Computing Project, were discussed Oct. 29 in a live online seminar featuring Kenneth C. Green, founding director of The Campus Computing Project, and Russell Poulin, interim executive director of WCET.

The goal of the survey was not so much to quantify the growth of online education, though there were a few questions on that and not surprisingly 95 percent reported an increase in the number of enrollments, but to get to the heart of the operational, instructional, and IT issues for online programs.

The survey covered a wide range of important planning and policy issues including faculty training, support services, tuition, ADA compliance, and assessment. Some of the key findings are:

• Organizational structures for online education programs are in a state of flux with 45 percent having restructured their management of online programs in the past two years and 52 percent anticipating they will restructure in the next years. Further, 29 percent reorganized during the past two years and expect another reorganization soon.
• In terms of profitability, only 1.6 percent report that their institution lost money on online programs. Forty-five percent report having profitable programs and a surprisingly large 45 percent of campuses don’t know if they’re making or losing money with online education.
• More than three-fourths (77 percent) of institutions in the survey report that they limit class size for online courses, with 37 students being the average enrollment cap.
• Tech support, a critical but sometimes overlooked factor to online student success, ranged from 24/7 support provided by 36 percent of institutions to Mon.-Fri. 9-5 support offered by 17 percent.
• Slightly over half (53 percent) of the institutions surveyed report mandatory technology training for faculty teaching online programs.
• Despite the emergence of a whole host of low-cost and easy-to-use web-based technologies, online courses rely heavily on traditional print materials. Eighty-five percent say textbooks are “widely used” in their programs.

Green and Poulin noted that while anecdotal information about how different campuses are managing their online programs is plentiful, they hope the data gathered with the survey will be “a catalyst for conversations” with regards to campus planning and policy decisions.

The survey data are based on responses from 182 senior campus officials at two- and four-year public and private U.S. colleges and universities who were surveyed in September and October 2009.

Critical New Findings from the ‘Managing Online Education’ Study

To date most data-gathering around online education programs has focused largely on documenting the rising enrollments in online courses. And make no mistake, online education is booming. But what’s been missing is reliable, comprehensive data to help distance education administrators with the planning and management of their programs. That’s about to change.

The groundbreaking 2009 National Survey of Online Education Programs provides the first-ever, national data on critical issues facing schools involved with eLearning. Sponsored by The Campus Computing Project and WCET, this survey is focused on the instructional, organizational, and technological operations of online programs across all levels of post-secondary institutions.

In Critical New Findings from the “Managing Online Education” Study, Dr. Kenneth C. Green from The Campus Computing Project and Russell Poulin from WCET explain the freshly-compiled data in this audio seminar format.

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You will receive the latest survey results on:

• Critical planning and policy issues
• Faculty training
• Assessment practices in online versus on-campus programs
• Outsourcing methods
• Preferred Learning Management Systems
• Class sizes and enrollment caps
• Marketing and recruitment strategies
• Factors most likely to impede your online expansion efforts
• ADA compliance in online courses and programs
• And more

Who will benefit from this seminar:
This seminar is an absolute must for anyone involved in online learning:

• Campus officials in charge of online education
• Faculty teaching online courses
• Information technology staff
• Providers serving the distance education market
• Anyone interested in learning what the competition in online learning is doing

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#4 Faculty competence: First, and most basic, the faculty that are going to be teaching online must have the content background. But beyond that they have to get the appropriate training to teach online. They have to understand online pedagogy and they have to understand the technology they’re using. You need to be able to certify that the faculty have the appropriate skills. Then you need to constantly update the faculty on those skills. Finally you need to have a faculty evaluation system and use that information to feed back into the courses.

#5 Institutional integrity: Again, starting with basics, the institution must be accredited. Regional accrediting agencies are your allies in ensuring institutional integrity. They will help you look at what you say you’re going to deliver and what you’re actually delivering and help you make sure they match. Institutions must be rigorous in establishing outcomes for programs and courses and measuring their effectiveness—are you achieving those outcomes?

“You say you’re going to do something and you show that you’re actually doing it,” says Merle Harris, president of Charter Oaks State College. Here, too, a key point is to make this information easily accessible to students. “You have to be upfront about it and make sure that people know that you are going to be upfront about it,” Harris says.

#6 Excellence in student services: The guiding principle is that you have to recreate online all the services that are offered on the ground. You have to be sure that students can get online advice and counseling. You have to make sure they can get complete information about their courses in advance. The online registration process has to be efficient. Students must have access to library services online. Online tutoring services should be available. You have to be able to accomplish financial aid transactions at a distance. Since the students are using technology they have to have a help desk. Not only must you recreate the services that students could walk to on campus—in most cases you actually have to do a better job because often enough students have a difficult time connecting with services on-campus.

#7 Integrity in marketing: Make sure you’re giving a clear and accurate message about what you actually can and do deliver, so that you’re not making promises that can’t be fulfilled. As with other aspects of transparency, integrity in marketing has to do with providing relevant information on your website—what the graduation rate is, what the alumni say about the program, etc.

#8 Curricular quality: “We have to make sure that there is quality in the content,” Harris says. For example at my institution courses are reviewed by other faculty members both before the course is offered, and the first time it’s offered, and then it comes up for review again within at the most five years—it could be earlier.” This periodical review is necessary to be sure that outcomes are clearly stated and that the students are achieving those outcomes.

“The keys are disclosure, transparency, the ability to interact with students easily and the quality of the curriculum. So that we know what we’re trying to achieve and we regularly measure it.”

Excerpted from Transparency is Good Practice for Online Administration, Distance Education Report, April 1, 2008.

10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching:
Best Practices in Distance Education

Teaching online for the first time is a little like trying to drive a car in a foreign country. You know how to drive, just like you know how to teach, but it sure is hard to get the hang of driving on the left side of the road … you’re not quite sure how far a kilometer is … and darn it if those road signs aren’t all in Japanese.

If you’d like to better understand the “rules of the road” for online teaching and learning, 10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education is the perfect guidebook.

10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education

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In the traditional college classroom today, faculty and students arrive with a set of expectations, shaped largely by past experiences. And although students may need the occasional (or perhaps frequent) reminder of what’s required of them, there’s usually something very familiar about the experience for both faculty and students alike.

In the online classroom, an entirely new set of variables enters the equation. Variables that, if not managed properly, can lead to frustration and an overall bad experience for teacher and learner.

This special report features a series of columns by Dr. Lawrence C. Ragan, Director of Instructional Design and Development for Penn State’s World Campus, and will help you establish online instructor best practices and performance expectations. The following snippets are just a taste of the insider’s advice found in the full report:

Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #1 Show Up and Teach — The necessity of this statement is borne of the misimpression that the online class “teaches itself.” Since most of the course is already authored and designed for online delivery, instructors may believe they simply need to serve as the proverbial “guide on the side” as the students navigate the learning system. Not true!

Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #2 Practice Proactive Course Management Strategies — The online instructor can help create a successful learning experience by practicing proactive course management strategies such as monitoring assignment submissions, and communicating and reminding students of missed and/or upcoming deadlines.

Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #3 Establish Patterns of Course Activities — Although the online classroom environment provides tremendous flexibility of time and place of study, establishing and communicating a course pace and pattern of work can aid both instructor and student, and alleviate confusion around how the course operates.

Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #4 Plan for the Unplanned — For those small or not-so-small occasions when “life happens,” having a strategy for informing students of these changes can go a long way to maintaining course continuity.

Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #5 Response Requested and Expected — Timely instructor feedback is essential for the online learner to manage their learning experience. Instructors are expected to respond to student inquiries within one business day.

10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education

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Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #6 Think Before You Write — Most experienced online instructors can relay a variety of stories about a dialogue with a student that went awry due to a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of the intended message. Take special care to be as clear and concise as possible.

Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #7 Help Maintain Forward Progress — Students in the online classroom rely on the timely return of assignment and exam grades in order to maintain positive forward progress in their studies.

Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #8 Safe and Secure — Using the institutionally supported learning management system provides increased degrees of security and confidentiality and keeps “institutional business” within the appropriate confines.

Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #9 Quality Counts — Instructors need to establish strategies for addressing the quality of the online learning experience, including content resources, instructional design strategies, and systems performance.

Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #10 (Double) Click a Mile on My Connection — As with many aspects of the online classroom, the technological infrastructure plays a critical role in determining student and instructor satisfaction.

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Faculty Focus contains a wealth of valuable material – not just about best practices in distance education, but all of the key issues that matter to today’s top faculty and administrators. It’s packed with strategies, tips, and other information you can use on the topics that impact your students, your school and your work, including:

• Instructional Design
• Faculty Development
• Teaching Strategies
• Distance Learning
• Classroom Management
• Educational Assessment
• Faculty Evaluation
• Learning Styles
• Curriculum Development
• Community College Issues
• Trends in Higher Education
• And much, much more.

10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education will serve as a valuable guidebook for new online educators, or those who are looking for proven strategies to help them overcome the unique challenges of online teaching.

10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education

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