Teaching an Online Course Developed by Others

While new instructors are often handed an existing syllabus to guide them, most are accustomed to having a good measure of control over class content, often tailoring it to fit teaching style and student needs. However, team-developed online courses are increasing in popularity, and as a result, instructors must be prepared to present content they had little role in assembling.

Utilizing standardized content effectively doesn’t mean that instructors are no longer able to make their own unique contributions to student learning. Teaching an Online Course Developed by Others was developed to help instructors and course designers effectively navigate the online course world together.

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The seminar identifies the advantages of “standardization,” while providing tips on how to overcome the difficulties inherent to teaching a course one did not originate. It also addresses the best ways for course designers to anticipate teaching issues arising from standardized content and provides tips on how faculty development and instructional design staff can better motivate and assist instructors teaching such courses.

In just 60 minutes you will learn:

• The advantages, disadvantages and potential challenges of teaching standardized courses
• Ways to make teaching more effective and satisfying
• How course developers can better anticipate teaching issues arising from standardized courses
• How to make personal contributions within the course’s “standardized content”

A key seminar for…

• Instructors
• Faculty
• Department Heads
• Instructional Designers
• Online Administrators
• And anyone involved in the online course experience.

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Q: Who benefits most from the use of a course template—the faculty or the students?
Cicchino: Everyone benefits from using a course template! The materials within the template assist faculty in such a way that they are able to focus on course content rather than what the hardware and software requirements are for using the course management system. In addition, the template materials help faculty who may not have taught or developed an online course before in terms of providing a sample course structure and reminders to provide a clear late policy and instructions on how students should submit their assignments.

The students benefit from faculty using the template because it provides a consistent learning environment. The template also provides details and resources about the university which can help ease anxiety of new students as well as provide a sense of community for the distance learner.

Q: Do you have a preferred rubric that you like to use?
Cicchino: For Seton Hall, Quality Matters is the best rubric for our online course development initiatives. Quality Matters was adopted by the College of Arts and Sciences Educational Policy Committee as the standard for creating their online courses in 2004. We (the Teaching, Learning and Technology Center) have been supporting the initiative by becoming a QM institution, providing and updating the template, providing training on using the template and the Quality Matters rubric and having three Instructional Designers trained as reviewers – one of which is certified.

Since taking the lead on this initiative two years ago, I have researched a couple other rubrics but have found that the Quality Matters rubric is the most comprehensive and well-structured rubric to meet our student and faculty needs. I find the annotations and examples of what each element means extremely helpful for the reviewer and faculty when developing or redesigning a course. I like that every few years QM revises and updates their standards based on pages and pages of literature and best practices. Quality Matters also provides training opportunities and literature as well as online support for using the rubric. (More information on Quality Matters is available here.)

Renee Cicchino, Senior Instructional Designer at Seton Hall University can tell you how it works. She’s developed a template for Seton Hall’s online core course program, and the professors are glad she did. The students are too. Because the template makes creating—and taking–an online course as easy as possible. For the professors, it eliminates a host of technical and administrative concerns. “We can build a base template and [the faculty] can fill in the content,” as Cicchino says. For the students, it removes most of the obstacles between them and actually participating fully in the course.

Join Renee Cicchino in a new online seminar CD, Using a Template to Assist Faculty in Online Course Development. Renee will show you how to develop quality-focused templates for your distance education program. Get the facts about course templates and how they can help you.

A good place to begin—and where Seton Hall did begin—is with the Quality Matters rubric. Two years into the core course project, Seton Hall’s Teaching Learning and Technology Center (TLTC) decided that the faculty needed a base, a foundation on which they could build their courses, without having to create one each time. The Educational Policy Committee did some research and came across the Quality Matters rubric.

Quality Matters is the course assessment instrument designed by Maryland Online that is on its way to becoming the standard evaluative tool for online courses. Heavily research-based, QM identifies 40 elements of an online course, distributed across eight broad standards shown to positively impact student learning. These elements are then incorporated into a rubric and each one weighted from 1 (important) to 3 (essential).

The resulting template allows faculty to think about what they need to put into an online course. “Some faculty have never taught online before,” says Cicchino. “So to give them best practices, or an idea of what they will need, was helpful.” Faculty, Cicchoni says, often have the misconception that they can take what they do in their face-to-face classes, put it up on BlackBoard and call it done. That’s not the case, but the template provides help and structure for the faculty member who’s just realizing that. “Everything needs to be detailed for students—from when do you expect me to post my initial response in the discussion board, to what are your expectations of me? And then there are student’s expectations of faculty. When will I receive feedback on my written assignments? If it’s due on this day, when will I get that feedback? The template contains answers to these questions.”

Help faculty adapt face-to-face content to online use with Using a Template to Assist Faculty in Online Course Development. This 75-minute online seminar was recorded October 1, 2008 so you can learn more about the benefits of using a template, and how to apply one on your campus.

Things faculty don’t have to remember with a template:

• ADA compliance
• Learning objectives
• Technology
• Policy
• Navigation
• Structural consistency
• Best practice suggestions
• Faculty responsibilities
• Et Cetera

“We put in materials that would assist the faculty; we highlighted the areas that are must-haves; and then we work with the faculty member to fill out the course,” Cicchino says. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. [The template] provides a very strong foundation.”

Renee Cicchino may be contacted at: cicchire@shu.edu

The Quality Matters website is at http://www.qualitymatters.org/.