Discussion: View Thread

  • 1.  Advice re: Online Teaching

    Posted 12-18-2017 10:47
    Hi Colleagues,

    Our departmental curriculum committee is discussing several issues associated with transitioning from offering only classroom teaching to offering both online and classroom teaching. We would like to learn from others, how have you handled the following issues? We will post a summary of the responses we receive. Thank you for your help.

    Q1 Teaching: We are an institution that provides both classroom instruction and online instruction, should all faculty teach both modes of instruction?  Should there be a limit to how many online courses an instructor can teach in an academic year? Should we allow specialization (i.e., teach only online, teach only in class) or require all faculty to teach both?

    Q2 Office Hours: How does online versus in class teaching load affect office hours? If you teach online courses should you be required to offer online/video/phone office hours during nontraditional hours (i.e., evening and/or weekend)? If you teach online should you be required to maintain traditional in-person office hours?

    Q3 Quality: How do you ensure the quality of online course design and online teaching? What specific measures do you take to maintain the quality of an online course that has passed a quality matters review? Can an instructor change an "approved" course design? Are there any limits to changes that can be made? Any review and approval procedures

    Q4 Evaluation: How do you evaluate online courses? What course evaluation does your institution use for online courses? (please share an example or source if possible)

    All the best,

    Dr. Foster/Mary

    Mary K. Foster, PhD, MBA
    Associate Professor

    Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, room 648

    (at the northwest corner of Hillen & Argonne, 1600 Havenwood Road)

    Morgan State University
    1700 E. Cold Spring Lane
    Baltimore, MD 21251-0001

    Office: 443-885-1691
    Fax: 443-885-8252
    Mobile: 443-310-5116





      









  • 2.  Advice Online Teaching

    Posted 12-18-2017 12:30

    Hi Mary,

    I helped develop an online program from the ground up.

    See responses to your questions inline:

    On 12/18/2017 8:47 AM, Mary Foster wrote:
    5D48AEC7-3146-4A13-9048-3EA9CB7C9A55@morgan.edu"> Hi Colleagues,

    Our departmental curriculum committee is discussing several issues associated with transitioning from offering only classroom teaching to offering both online and classroom teaching. We would like to learn from others, how have you handled the following issues? We will post a summary of the responses we receive. Thank you for your help.

    Q1 Teaching: We are an institution that provides both classroom instruction and online instruction, should all faculty teach both modes of instruction?  Should there be a limit to how many online courses an instructor can teach in an academic year? Should we allow specialization (i.e., teach only online, teach only in class) or require all faculty to teach both?

    Online teaching is a different skill set than face-to-face: Online has the capacity to handle many more students simultaneously, depending on course design, so some weighting needs to be determined based on the program volume. It may be that a direct comparison of traditional versus online represents a false dichotomy, hence specialization is a good starting point with empirical examination along the way to determine if convergent/comparable criteria are feasible or necessary. Ultimately, the value to the institution is based on the programs success.

    That being said, many of our faculty maintain full-time appointments elsewhere, but the teaching load in medicine is different from 'main' campus.

    Nevertheless, a face to face component for online students is highly desirable and we offer this in addition to courses, but the face to face component is not absolutely required (in our case) as our students are busy professionals (physicians) and prefer the asynchronous learn at your own pace model.

    5D48AEC7-3146-4A13-9048-3EA9CB7C9A55@morgan.edu">

    Q2 Office Hours: How does online versus in class teaching load affect office hours? If you teach online courses should you be required to offer online/video/phone office hours during nontraditional hours (i.e., evening and/or weekend)? If you teach online should you be required to maintain traditional in-person office hours?

    Again it depends on your teaching model and location of faculty and students. Office hours would be desirable if all of your learners and faculty are resident. Availability for individual learners may be achieved via Skype, etc. Again, online teaching represents a paradigm shift that does not necessarily fit existing organizational structures (consider NextGenU.org - well-funded platform with a mission to become the first fully online medical school - e.g. teaching clinical skills).
    5D48AEC7-3146-4A13-9048-3EA9CB7C9A55@morgan.edu">

    Q3 Quality: How do you ensure the quality of online course design and online teaching? What specific measures do you take to maintain the quality of an online course that has passed a quality matters review? Can an instructor change an "approved" course design? Are there any limits to changes that can be made? Any review and approval procedures

    The quality is in the a priori course design. In our case, the whole program was designed by our program director, a world-class leader in the field.
    Once established - instructors teach and course contents can only change (update) via committee.
    5D48AEC7-3146-4A13-9048-3EA9CB7C9A55@morgan.edu">

    Q4 Evaluation: How do you evaluate online courses? What course evaluation does your institution use for online courses? (please share an example or source if possible)

    As with all university programs, student evaluation is important, but suffers from the Hawthorn Effect. We only admit about 10% of all applications, but the proof is in the pudding: About 50% of our graduates go on to become leaders in the field in their home regions (e.g., program directors and deans, etc.)

    Hope this helps!
    PS

    Our program  internationalgme.org is a fully online graduate program in medical education - "we teach health professionals how to teach"
    Our very 'low cost' system is adaptable to any educational topic and may be branded to represent any institution.
    as of 2016 it numbered the second lowest cost program of 21 registered with FAIMER.org and we have an equitable participation model that permits participation of low-income countries.

    D
    5D48AEC7-3146-4A13-9048-3EA9CB7C9A55@morgan.edu">

    All the best,

    Dr. Foster/Mary

    Mary K. Foster, PhD, MBA
    Associate Professor

    Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, room 648

    (at the northwest corner of Hillen & Argonne, 1600 Havenwood Road)

    Morgan State University
    1700 E. Cold Spring Lane
    Baltimore, MD 21251-0001

    Office: 443-885-1691
    Fax: 443-885-8252
    Mobile: 443-310-5116





      










  • 3.  Advice Online Teaching

    Posted 12-18-2017 13:01

    Dear Professor Foster,

     

    Thank you for your query.  Here are my two cents (having been at one time responsible for our required curriculum):

    1.       Teaching:  Requiring faculty to do things is not, in my view, a path toward excellence.  Encouraging and/or incentivizing allows them to make the choice-and choice usually produces higher quality than obligation.  I come down on allowing specialization and ensuring that by recruiting a diverse team.  That said, faculty who are willing to learn and add to their skill sets are likely to do both because it's fun, current, and challenging.

    2.       Office Hours:  We at Darden always encouraged out-of-class faculty/student interaction.  We didn't have office hours, but our doors were always open.  Students could come by or email us at any time.  I think this built higher levels of trust, influence, and frankly learning than office hours-which send a message that our faculty's commitment is limited.  No offense, just our view.  I had a colleague once say, "University would fine if not for the students."  If research is the primary/only focus, then teaching and students will suffer.  I think we need a "balanced scorecard" in university as well as business.  Time spent with students is not, as another colleague once said, "a waste of time."  (These were not Darden colleagues, btw, but from other universities.)  I answered student emails whenever they came in. 

    3.       Quality:  In my view, quality depends on the faculty you hire.  We relied on our faculty to design and deliver world-class courses.  If you have a faculty-based quality review process, you can obviously use that to assess each course on-line or not.  You can also use student ratings for that purpose.  We have a very active student feedback system, and an intense annual student-run quality assessment process of both required and elective curricula/programs.  We disseminate the rankings of these ratings and surveys; required course heads (with multiple sections and teaching faculty) work hard to rate high in those rankings.  In my experience, on-line courses are more difficult to do well. I've done on-line courses and hybrid courses with on-line segments and in-class segments.  I believe the F2F in-class experience is superior-and that on-line experiences provide a less expensive but not equivalent alternative. 

    4.       Evaluation:    See #3 above.  We also include teaching ratings, course design, and materials development (on-line and hard copy cases, technical/theory notes, etc.) in our promotion decisions.  If you don't do that, and many schools don't, it will be difficult to manage the course quality since the overall message is "research is the most important thing you do, and teaching related activity is necessary but not valued."  IF you use adjunct faculty, you may provide in-house seminars on teaching and/or a coach/mentor relationship with tenure track faculty.  We have done both of those successfully.  The tenets of your program culture / administration will have a big influence on these decisions.  See attached note fyi.

     

    I hope these few thoughts are helpful.  Feel free to email me (below) if you wish.

     

    Best regards for your decisions and for the holidays,

      Jim

    James G. Clawson

    Johnson & Higgins Professor of Leadership and Orgaizational Behavior, Emeritus

    The Darden School, University of Virginia

     

    Cell:  434 825-3797             Web:  http://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/clawson/index.htm

    Twitter:  @Jajisee              Blog:  http://jajisee.blogspot.com/

     

    Level Three Leadership:  http://www.nadobimakoba.com

    Latest Work:  A Song of Humanity: A Science-Based Alternative to the World's Scriptures

     

    From: Management Education and Development Discussion [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.AOM.ORG] On Behalf Of Mary Foster
    Sent: Monday, December 18, 2017 10:47 AM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.AOM.ORG
    Subject: Advice re: Online Teaching

     

    Hi Colleagues,

    Our departmental curriculum committee is discussing several issues associated with transitioning from offering only classroom teaching to offering both online and classroom teaching. We would like to learn from others, how have you handled the following issues? We will post a summary of the responses we receive. Thank you for your help.

    Q1 Teaching: We are an institution that provides both classroom instruction and online instruction, should all faculty teach both modes of instruction?  Should there be a limit to how many online courses an instructor can teach in an academic year? Should we allow specialization (i.e., teach only online, teach only in class) or require all faculty to teach both?

    Q2 Office Hours: How does online versus in class teaching load affect office hours? If you teach online courses should you be required to offer online/video/phone office hours during nontraditional hours (i.e., evening and/or weekend)? If you teach online should you be required to maintain traditional in-person office hours?

    Q3 Quality: How do you ensure the quality of online course design and online teaching? What specific measures do you take to maintain the quality of an online course that has passed a quality matters review? Can an instructor change an "approved" course design? Are there any limits to changes that can be made? Any review and approval procedures

    Q4 Evaluation: How do you evaluate online courses? What course evaluation does your institution use for online courses? (please share an example or source if possible)

    All the best,

     

    Dr. Foster/Mary

     

    Mary K. Foster, PhD, MBA

    Associate Professor

    Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, room 648

     

    (at the northwest corner of Hillen & Argonne, 1600 Havenwood Road)


    Morgan State University
    1700 E. Cold Spring Lane
    Baltimore, MD 21251-0001


    Office: 443-885-1691
    Fax: 443-885-8252
    Mobile: 443-310-5116





      

     

     

     

     

     

     



  • 4.  Advice re: Online Teaching

    Posted 12-18-2017 15:22
    Hi Dr. Foster,

    Good questions, and I see you already have some quality feedback from Dr Cawthorpe and Dr. Clawson. To the degree that it's beneficial, here are some additional thoughts.

    Q1: Teaching
    a) All faculty teaching online? One of the mistakes I see departments make is to assume that "all" must participate in a new online program. As long as there is a handful of willing that have the departments blessing, all do not need to participate. And those who do not want to, are often ok to support the others as long as they do not have to be involved. 
    b) Limit? at two different institutions, for full-time faculty living in two worlds (online and on-campus), I've usually capped faculty at no more than 2 online courses per semester.
    c) Required? While having faculty teach in both modes may seem ideal, as it would equip a holistic pedagogical prowess among the entire group, I would echo Dr. Clawson's point. Providing incentives and allowing free choice might be a wiser move.

    Q2: Office Hours
    a) Office hour load - a credit hour is a credit hour. However many office hours are typical of an on-campus course/semester load should also be encouraged online. 
    b) Non-traditional office hours - oh yes! Many online students will do their work at nights or weekends. An instructor having some availability during non-traditional times is very important. Keep in mind that online students may rarely "show up" for online office hours. Email responsiveness and appointments for help are sometimes emphasized more online.
    c) Splitting office hours between online/on-campus- I would recommend splitting/allocating proportionally.

    Q3: Quality
    a) Quality: in addition to QM or peer reviews that you mentioned...
    i) Taking faculty through an online teaching crash-course is a great first step. Such a training/bootcamp can help discover how online learning differs and the needs involved with it.
    ii) Partnering a faculty as Subject Matter Experts of their discipline with an Online Instructional Designers - who are subject matter experts in online learning - is a great way of ensuring quality online course design. 
    b) Maintaining quality - it depends. Some will take a iterative approach to online course design; others won't touch a course after its been designed for 3-5 years. If possible, I would encourage an iterative process for 1-3 years...then maybe a 3-5 complete "redesign" life cycle.
    c) Changing the course - varies. Some institutions will limit who and how often changes can be made. Some institutions will keep a "master course shell" of the pure course and import a copy of it into each term used and allow instructors to make "certain" changes to allow each instructor to "personalize" the course in the term they teach it.
    d) Review and approval - this depends more on what's normal for the institution. I've seen informal - where faculty and online director approval is all that's needed. I've seen formal that requires a flow-chart that requires multiple levels of sign-offs on every step along the way.

    Q4: Evaluation
    a) How? I'd encourage to use all the data you can....and definitely more than just student feedback or satisfaction ratings. Those are important, sure, but they don't always tell the whole story.
    b) What evaluation? I'd recommend crafting or adapting your own based on what you value most, as it can vary. 

    Hope that helps. Feel free to email me directly with any follow-ups.

    Ryan Baltrip, Ph.D.
    Director of Online Programming
    William & Mary
    Office of the Associate Provost for University eLearning Initiatives (APeL)
    Morton 113
    757-221-1102


    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    From: Mary Foster <mary.foster@morgan.edu>
    Date: Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 10:47 AM
    Subject: Advice re: Online Teaching
    To: MG-ED-DV@aomlists.aom.org


    Hi Colleagues,

    Our departmental curriculum committee is discussing several issues associated with transitioning from offering only classroom teaching to offering both online and classroom teaching. We would like to learn from others, how have you handled the following issues? We will post a summary of the responses we receive. Thank you for your help.

    Q1 Teaching: We are an institution that provides both classroom instruction and online instruction, should all faculty teach both modes of instruction?  Should there be a limit to how many online courses an instructor can teach in an academic year? Should we allow specialization (i.e., teach only online, teach only in class) or require all faculty to teach both?

    Q2 Office Hours: How does online versus in class teaching load affect office hours? If you teach online courses should you be required to offer online/video/phone office hours during nontraditional hours (i.e., evening and/or weekend)? If you teach online should you be required to maintain traditional in-person office hours?

    Q3 Quality: How do you ensure the quality of online course design and online teaching? What specific measures do you take to maintain the quality of an online course that has passed a quality matters review? Can an instructor change an "approved" course design? Are there any limits to changes that can be made? Any review and approval procedures

    Q4 Evaluation: How do you evaluate online courses? What course evaluation does your institution use for online courses? (please share an example or source if possible)

    All the best,

    Dr. Foster/Mary

    Mary K. Foster, PhD, MBA
    Associate Professor

    Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, room 648

    (at the northwest corner of Hillen & Argonne, 1600 Havenwood Road)




      











  • 5.  Advice Online Teaching

    Posted 12-18-2017 15:46
    Hi Dr. Foster,

    Good questions, and I see you already have some quality feedback from Dr Cawthorpe and Dr. Clawson. To the degree that it's beneficial, here are some additional thoughts.

    Q1: Teaching
    a) All faculty teaching online? One of the mistakes I see departments make is to assume that "all" must participate in a new online program. As long as there is a handful of willing that have the departments blessing, all do not need to participate. And those who do not want to, are often ok to support the others as long as they do not have to be involved. 
    b) Limit? at two different institutions, for full-time faculty living in two worlds (online and on-campus), I've usually capped faculty at no more than 2 online courses per semester.
    c) Required? While having faculty teach in both modes may seem ideal, as it would equip a holistic pedagogical prowess among the entire group, I would echo Dr. Clawson's point. Providing incentives and allowing free choice might be a wiser move.

    Q2: Office Hours
    a) Office hour load - a credit hour is a credit hour. However many office hours are typical of an on-campus course/semester load should also be encouraged online. 
    b) Non-traditional office hours - oh yes! Many online students will do their work at nights or weekends. An instructor having some availability during non-traditional times is very important. Keep in mind that online students may rarely "show up" for online office hours. Email responsiveness and appointments for help are sometimes emphasized more online.
    c) Splitting office hours between online/on-campus- I would recommend splitting/allocating proportionally.

    Q3: Quality
    a) Quality: in addition to QM or peer reviews that you mentioned...
    i) Taking faculty through an online teaching crash-course is a great first step. Such a training/bootcamp can help discover how online learning differs and the needs involved with it.
    ii) Partnering a faculty as Subject Matter Experts of their discipline with an Online Instructional Designers - who are subject matter experts in online learning - is a great way of ensuring quality online course design. 
    b) Maintaining quality - it depends. Some will take a iterative approach to online course design; others won't touch a course after its been designed for 3-5 years. If possible, I would encourage an iterative process for 1-3 years...then maybe a 3-5 complete "redesign" life cycle.
    c) Changing the course - varies. Some institutions will limit who and how often changes can be made. Some institutions will keep a "master course shell" of the pure course and import a copy of it into each term used and allow instructors to make "certain" changes to allow each instructor to "personalize" the course in the term they teach it.
    d) Review and approval - this depends more on what's normal for the institution. I've seen informal - where faculty and online director approval is all that's needed. I've seen formal that requires a flow-chart that requires multiple levels of sign-offs on every step along the way.

    Q4: Evaluation
    a) How? I'd encourage to use all the data you can....and definitely more than just student feedback or satisfaction ratings. Those are important, sure, but they don't always tell the whole story.
    b) What evaluation? I'd recommend crafting or adapting your own based on what you value most, as it can vary. 

    Hope that helps. Feel free to email me directly here or at rbaltrip@wm.edu with any follow-ups.

    Ryan Baltrip, Ph.D.
    Director of Online Programming
    William & Mary
    Office of the Associate Provost for University eLearning Initiatives (APeL)
    Morton 113

    On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 10:47 AM, Mary Foster <mary.foster@morgan.edu> wrote:
    Hi Colleagues,

    Our departmental curriculum committee is discussing several issues associated with transitioning from offering only classroom teaching to offering both online and classroom teaching. We would like to learn from others, how have you handled the following issues? We will post a summary of the responses we receive. Thank you for your help.

    Q1 Teaching: We are an institution that provides both classroom instruction and online instruction, should all faculty teach both modes of instruction?  Should there be a limit to how many online courses an instructor can teach in an academic year? Should we allow specialization (i.e., teach only online, teach only in class) or require all faculty to teach both?

    Q2 Office Hours: How does online versus in class teaching load affect office hours? If you teach online courses should you be required to offer online/video/phone office hours during nontraditional hours (i.e., evening and/or weekend)? If you teach online should you be required to maintain traditional in-person office hours?

    Q3 Quality: How do you ensure the quality of online course design and online teaching? What specific measures do you take to maintain the quality of an online course that has passed a quality matters review? Can an instructor change an "approved" course design? Are there any limits to changes that can be made? Any review and approval procedures

    Q4 Evaluation: How do you evaluate online courses? What course evaluation does your institution use for online courses? (please share an example or source if possible)

    All the best,

    Dr. Foster/Mary

    Mary K. Foster, PhD, MBA
    Associate Professor

    Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, room 648

    (at the northwest corner of Hillen & Argonne, 1600 Havenwood Road)




      










  • 6.  Advice Online Teaching

    Posted 12-19-2017 14:07
    Hi Dr Foster ... This is not a direct answer to your questions, but raises an issue you might consider. 

    There are vast quantities of high-quality course material already available online [plus, of course, plenty of garbage!] - so asking your existing Faculty to create yet more online classes may, for most, be a bad waste of their time. I have been building online class material for 20 years, and believe me, the investment to create something good is huge! [and I am still not satisfied with my own stuff] So what to do ... ?

    A way into this is to consider what value face-to-face class time actually provides - and that is about helping students understand and apply what they have learned, not 'teaching' them. There's little new in this - leading Universities always worked on the basis that students teach themselves from published resources [books!], and should come to class knowing the content, so they spend class thinking about it and working with it. 'Lectures' are rare. And we are now seeing those principles push down into the youngest school-age classes. 

    Online classes fulfil exactly the role of books in the past, but plus some things - notably the opportunity for students to do more self-teaching, through exercises and online quizzes. You wouldn't expect Faculty to write all their own textbooks, so why should they write all their own online classes? I did invest in creating entire online courses, because no-one had written any of what I needed, either in books or in online classes, but that is an unusual situation - most courses will have similar structure and content to similarly-titled courses in many other Universities, and probably use the same books! 

    I do not actually teach very often with my own material these days, focusing instead on helping other faculty adopt it, but when I do, students follow my online classes in their own time before I show up for a face-to-face class, and we spend class time applying what they learned. I stress from the start that I will not "re-teach" what they should already know. I am, though, available online asynchronously throughout the pre-class period to handle questions. Sometimes, I include scheduled webinars for blended courses. But when I offer online-only courses, I always provide both asynchronous support and scheduled webinars. [Do encourage students to use open discussion channels, rather than 1-to-1 email - if one person has a question, it's certain that others have the same question - and set a rule that 'There is no such thing as a stupid question', all questions are valid and will be answered supportively]

    You might, then, consider encouraging Faculty to seek out the very best online class material in their field, and designing that content into their own syllabi. Just as with books, those Faculty may decide that they need to be selective and adaptive ['I will use classes 1, 2, 4, 7 from this source, but will add other resources for the other parts. I may even need to record some specific online elements of my own.']. Unfortunately, many online courses are not designed around this 'buffet' philosophy, and follow a 'take it or leave it' approach, implicitly offering to replace your Faculty altogether, which will not work for those Faculty, their students, or your institution. So your Faculty will have to hunt for the good and flexible stuff. 

    Lots of the advice you have received from others about office hours, maintaining engagement etc is great, so I won't try to add to that.

    Kind regards - Kim Warren

    PS - I am happy to share more with anyone wanting to investigate any of this in the Strategy or Entrepreneurship fields, see sdl.re/courses. 
     
    T:+44 1844 274061 | M: +44 7802 485869 | Sk: kim.d.warren | www.strategydynamics.com

    On 18 December 2017 at 20:46, Ryan Baltrip <ryanbaltrip@gmail.com> wrote:
    Hi Dr. Foster,

    Good questions, and I see you already have some quality feedback from Dr Cawthorpe and Dr. Clawson. To the degree that it's beneficial, here are some additional thoughts.

    Q1: Teaching
    a) All faculty teaching online? One of the mistakes I see departments make is to assume that "all" must participate in a new online program. As long as there is a handful of willing that have the departments blessing, all do not need to participate. And those who do not want to, are often ok to support the others as long as they do not have to be involved. 
    b) Limit? at two different institutions, for full-time faculty living in two worlds (online and on-campus), I've usually capped faculty at no more than 2 online courses per semester.
    c) Required? While having faculty teach in both modes may seem ideal, as it would equip a holistic pedagogical prowess among the entire group, I would echo Dr. Clawson's point. Providing incentives and allowing free choice might be a wiser move.

    Q2: Office Hours
    a) Office hour load - a credit hour is a credit hour. However many office hours are typical of an on-campus course/semester load should also be encouraged online. 
    b) Non-traditional office hours - oh yes! Many online students will do their work at nights or weekends. An instructor having some availability during non-traditional times is very important. Keep in mind that online students may rarely "show up" for online office hours. Email responsiveness and appointments for help are sometimes emphasized more online.
    c) Splitting office hours between online/on-campus- I would recommend splitting/allocating proportionally.

    Q3: Quality
    a) Quality: in addition to QM or peer reviews that you mentioned...
    i) Taking faculty through an online teaching crash-course is a great first step. Such a training/bootcamp can help discover how online learning differs and the needs involved with it.
    ii) Partnering a faculty as Subject Matter Experts of their discipline with an Online Instructional Designers - who are subject matter experts in online learning - is a great way of ensuring quality online course design. 
    b) Maintaining quality - it depends. Some will take a iterative approach to online course design; others won't touch a course after its been designed for 3-5 years. If possible, I would encourage an iterative process for 1-3 years...then maybe a 3-5 complete "redesign" life cycle.
    c) Changing the course - varies. Some institutions will limit who and how often changes can be made. Some institutions will keep a "master course shell" of the pure course and import a copy of it into each term used and allow instructors to make "certain" changes to allow each instructor to "personalize" the course in the term they teach it.
    d) Review and approval - this depends more on what's normal for the institution. I've seen informal - where faculty and online director approval is all that's needed. I've seen formal that requires a flow-chart that requires multiple levels of sign-offs on every step along the way.

    Q4: Evaluation
    a) How? I'd encourage to use all the data you can....and definitely more than just student feedback or satisfaction ratings. Those are important, sure, but they don't always tell the whole story.
    b) What evaluation? I'd recommend crafting or adapting your own based on what you value most, as it can vary. 

    Hope that helps. Feel free to email me directly here or at rbaltrip@wm.edu with any follow-ups.

    Ryan Baltrip, Ph.D.
    Director of Online Programming
    William & Mary
    Office of the Associate Provost for University eLearning Initiatives (APeL)
    Morton 113

    On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 10:47 AM, Mary Foster <mary.foster@morgan.edu> wrote:
    Hi Colleagues,

    Our departmental curriculum committee is discussing several issues associated with transitioning from offering only classroom teaching to offering both online and classroom teaching. We would like to learn from others, how have you handled the following issues? We will post a summary of the responses we receive. Thank you for your help.

    Q1 Teaching: We are an institution that provides both classroom instruction and online instruction, should all faculty teach both modes of instruction?  Should there be a limit to how many online courses an instructor can teach in an academic year? Should we allow specialization (i.e., teach only online, teach only in class) or require all faculty to teach both?

    Q2 Office Hours: How does online versus in class teaching load affect office hours? If you teach online courses should you be required to offer online/video/phone office hours during nontraditional hours (i.e., evening and/or weekend)? If you teach online should you be required to maintain traditional in-person office hours?

    Q3 Quality: How do you ensure the quality of online course design and online teaching? What specific measures do you take to maintain the quality of an online course that has passed a quality matters review? Can an instructor change an "approved" course design? Are there any limits to changes that can be made? Any review and approval procedures

    Q4 Evaluation: How do you evaluate online courses? What course evaluation does your institution use for online courses? (please share an example or source if possible)

    All the best,

    Dr. Foster/Mary

    Mary K. Foster, PhD, MBA
    Associate Professor

    Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, room 648

    (at the northwest corner of Hillen & Argonne, 1600 Havenwood Road)




      











  • 7.  Advice Online Teaching

    Posted 12-20-2017 06:21

    Hi Kim – great advice.

     

    Mary

     

    In relation to sources of online learning material, at the Open University we publish a minimum of 5% of any course we create as a free online learning resource on our OpenLearn site.

     

    This is provided under a Creative Commons attribution, share alike, non-commercial licence so is available to other educational institutions to use (and modify so long as the modified version is published under the same licence).

     

    Business and Management resources can be found here http://www.open.edu/openlearn/money-management/free-courses

     

    If you are at an AACSB member school, you may also be interested in the AACSB Online Learning affinity group which we recently set up.

     

    Best regards

     

    Mark

     

     

     

    Mark Fenton-O'Creevy | Associate Dean External Engagement

    & Professor of Organisational Behaviour

    Faculty of Business and Law

    The Open University, Michael Young Building, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA
    Tel: +44 (0) 1908 655804

    Recent  publications:

     

    Gooderham, P., Fenton-O'Creevy, M., Croucher, R., & Brookes, M. A Multilevel  analysis of the Use of Individual Pay-for-Performance Systems, Journal of Management

     

    'I understood the words but I didn't know what they meant': Japanese online MBA students' experiences of British assessment practices: Open Learning

     

    My blog on emotion and finance

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    From: Management Education and Development Discussion [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.AOM.ORG] On Behalf Of Kim Warren
    Sent: 19 December 2017 19:07
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.AOM.ORG
    Subject: Re: Advice re: Online Teaching

     

    Hi Dr Foster ... This is not a direct answer to your questions, but raises an issue you might consider. 

     

    There are vast quantities of high-quality course material already available online [plus, of course, plenty of garbage!] - so asking your existing Faculty to create yet more online classes may, for most, be a bad waste of their time. I have been building online class material for 20 years, and believe me, the investment to create something good is huge! [and I am still not satisfied with my own stuff] So what to do ... ?

     

    A way into this is to consider what value face-to-face class time actually provides - and that is about helping students understand and apply what they have learned, not 'teaching' them. There's little new in this - leading Universities always worked on the basis that students teach themselves from published resources [books!], and should come to class knowing the content, so they spend class thinking about it and working with it. 'Lectures' are rare. And we are now seeing those principles push down into the youngest school-age classes. 

     

    Online classes fulfil exactly the role of books in the past, but plus some things - notably the opportunity for students to do more self-teaching, through exercises and online quizzes. You wouldn't expect Faculty to write all their own textbooks, so why should they write all their own online classes? I did invest in creating entire online courses, because no-one had written any of what I needed, either in books or in online classes, but that is an unusual situation - most courses will have similar structure and content to similarly-titled courses in many other Universities, and probably use the same books! 

     

    I do not actually teach very often with my own material these days, focusing instead on helping other faculty adopt it, but when I do, students follow my online classes in their own time before I show up for a face-to-face class, and we spend class time applying what they learned. I stress from the start that I will not "re-teach" what they should already know. I am, though, available online asynchronously throughout the pre-class period to handle questions. Sometimes, I include scheduled webinars for blended courses. But when I offer online-only courses, I always provide both asynchronous support and scheduled webinars. [Do encourage students to use open discussion channels, rather than 1-to-1 email - if one person has a question, it's certain that others have the same question - and set a rule that 'There is no such thing as a stupid question', all questions are valid and will be answered supportively]

     

    You might, then, consider encouraging Faculty to seek out the very best online class material in their field, and designing that content into their own syllabi. Just as with books, those Faculty may decide that they need to be selective and adaptive ['I will use classes 1, 2, 4, 7 from this source, but will add other resources for the other parts. I may even need to record some specific online elements of my own.']. Unfortunately, many online courses are not designed around this 'buffet' philosophy, and follow a 'take it or leave it' approach, implicitly offering to replace your Faculty altogether, which will not work for those Faculty, their students, or your institution. So your Faculty will have to hunt for the good and flexible stuff. 

     

    Lots of the advice you have received from others about office hours, maintaining engagement etc is great, so I won't try to add to that.

     

    Kind regards - Kim Warren

     

    PS - I am happy to share more with anyone wanting to investigate any of this in the Strategy or Entrepreneurship fields, see sdl.re/courses. 

     

    T:+44 1844 274061 | M: +44 7802 485869 | Sk: kim.d.warren | www.strategydynamics.com

     

    On 18 December 2017 at 20:46, Ryan Baltrip <ryanbaltrip@gmail.com> wrote:

    Hi Dr. Foster,

     

    Good questions, and I see you already have some quality feedback from Dr Cawthorpe and Dr. Clawson. To the degree that it's beneficial, here are some additional thoughts.

     

    Q1: Teaching

    a) All faculty teaching online? One of the mistakes I see departments make is to assume that "all" must participate in a new online program. As long as there is a handful of willing that have the departments blessing, all do not need to participate. And those who do not want to, are often ok to support the others as long as they do not have to be involved. 

    b) Limit? at two different institutions, for full-time faculty living in two worlds (online and on-campus), I've usually capped faculty at no more than 2 online courses per semester.

    c) Required? While having faculty teach in both modes may seem ideal, as it would equip a holistic pedagogical prowess among the entire group, I would echo Dr. Clawson's point. Providing incentives and allowing free choice might be a wiser move.

     

    Q2: Office Hours

    a) Office hour load - a credit hour is a credit hour. However many office hours are typical of an on-campus course/semester load should also be encouraged online. 

    b) Non-traditional office hours - oh yes! Many online students will do their work at nights or weekends. An instructor having some availability during non-traditional times is very important. Keep in mind that online students may rarely "show up" for online office hours. Email responsiveness and appointments for help are sometimes emphasized more online.

    c) Splitting office hours between online/on-campus- I would recommend splitting/allocating proportionally.

     

    Q3: Quality

    a) Quality: in addition to QM or peer reviews that you mentioned...

    i) Taking faculty through an online teaching crash-course is a great first step. Such a training/bootcamp can help discover how online learning differs and the needs involved with it.

    ii) Partnering a faculty as Subject Matter Experts of their discipline with an Online Instructional Designers - who are subject matter experts in online learning - is a great way of ensuring quality online course design. 

    b) Maintaining quality - it depends. Some will take a iterative approach to online course design; others won't touch a course after its been designed for 3-5 years. If possible, I would encourage an iterative process for 1-3 years...then maybe a 3-5 complete "redesign" life cycle.

    c) Changing the course - varies. Some institutions will limit who and how often changes can be made. Some institutions will keep a "master course shell" of the pure course and import a copy of it into each term used and allow instructors to make "certain" changes to allow each instructor to "personalize" the course in the term they teach it.

    d) Review and approval - this depends more on what's normal for the institution. I've seen informal - where faculty and online director approval is all that's needed. I've seen formal that requires a flow-chart that requires multiple levels of sign-offs on every step along the way.

     

    Q4: Evaluation

    a) How? I'd encourage to use all the data you can....and definitely more than just student feedback or satisfaction ratings. Those are important, sure, but they don't always tell the whole story.

    b) What evaluation? I'd recommend crafting or adapting your own based on what you value most, as it can vary. 

     

    Hope that helps. Feel free to email me directly here or at rbaltrip@wm.edu with any follow-ups.


    Ryan Baltrip, Ph.D.

    Director of Online Programming

    William & Mary

    Office of the Associate Provost for University eLearning Initiatives (APeL)

    Morton 113

     

    On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 10:47 AM, Mary Foster <mary.foster@morgan.edu> wrote:

    Hi Colleagues,

    Our departmental curriculum committee is discussing several issues associated with transitioning from offering only classroom teaching to offering both online and classroom teaching. We would like to learn from others, how have you handled the following issues? We will post a summary of the responses we receive. Thank you for your help.

    Q1 Teaching: We are an institution that provides both classroom instruction and online instruction, should all faculty teach both modes of instruction?  Should there be a limit to how many online courses an instructor can teach in an academic year? Should we allow specialization (i.e., teach only online, teach only in class) or require all faculty to teach both?

    Q2 Office Hours: How does online versus in class teaching load affect office hours? If you teach online courses should you be required to offer online/video/phone office hours during nontraditional hours (i.e., evening and/or weekend)? If you teach online should you be required to maintain traditional in-person office hours?

    Q3 Quality: How do you ensure the quality of online course design and online teaching? What specific measures do you take to maintain the quality of an online course that has passed a quality matters review? Can an instructor change an "approved" course design? Are there any limits to changes that can be made? Any review and approval procedures

    Q4 Evaluation: How do you evaluate online courses? What course evaluation does your institution use for online courses? (please share an example or source if possible)

    All the best,

     

    Dr. Foster/Mary

     

    Mary K. Foster, PhD, MBA

    Associate Professor

    Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, room 648

     

    (at the northwest corner of Hillen & Argonne, 1600 Havenwood Road)





      

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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