Monday, October 24
8:30 AM-12:00 PM
UTC

Leverage Online Learning Strategies: Ensure Course Quality while Managing Faculty Workload

Tutorial ID: 13998
  1. Michael Scheuermann
    Drexel University

Abstract: As institutions move toward offering more blended courses and distributed learning in general, maintaining course quality and academic rigor often mean significantly increased workloads for faculty members. To meet this challenge, instructors have developed ad hoc strategies to reconcile this dilemma. A workshop is the perfect forum where these insights and strategies can be shared, discussed, noted, and taken back to our various institutions and academic colleagues.

Objectives

The fundamental objective of this workshop is to share individual strategies that instructors have tried and refined for: • maintaining the quality and academic rigor in their blended or distributed learning courses, while • effectively managing their workload during the course(s). This is a challenging balancing act. No one can do it perfectly, but we all have individual insights to share. Further, we want to hear what our colleagues have tried and found successful, as well as what they have tried and found not so successful. Perhaps our struggles can be addresses through the thoughts of our colleagues. Similarly, our insights may well address some of the challenges that our colleagues face in these environments. Another objective is to ensure that all who have some strategies to share or struggles to offer the group have the opportunity to contribute. Thus, a round-robin discussion style will prevail. A final objective is to have all who participate feel that the session represented a valuable exchange, that everyone contributed, and that participants have a checklist of strategies and additional things to think about when it comes to ensuring academic quality and rigor while maintaining a workable load for instructors.

Topical Outline

Delivering online courses is challenging. Educators must maintain course quality and academic rigor while managing the workload of the individual instructor(s). We develop strategies to accomplish both, mostly in an ad hoc fashion. These must be shared and leveraged through dissemination to or colleagues. Participants can expect an interactive, lively exchange of critical information that will be of practical value. This will be a completely interactive session. There will be no formal presentation, rather, the moderator will facilitate a discussion of participant experiences (successes, failures, challenges, etc.) from the Group Discussion Outline (on strategies for increasing online course quality while controlling the workload experienced by the instructor): - Developing courses - Delivering courses - Course materials - Syllabus - Threaded Discussions - Assignments - Mail - Chat - Other topics of interest brought forward by attendees.

Prerequisites

Participants in this workshop need to be teaching courses online or supporting faculty who do so. This workshop will provide a meaningful exchange of ideas and strategies for faculty and faculty support individuals who are engaged in completely online courses, hybrid courses, or face-to-face courses that are enhanced with CMS features and functions. Participants who do not currently teach in any of the above manners would gain valuable information in witnessing the information exchange, but, would not be able to contribute substantively to the workshop discussion. Lastly, he is a trained facilitator with responsibility for conducting CMS training workshops at the university for faculty, TAs, and administrators who represent Drexel or any of the partner institutions.

Experience Level

Intermediate

Qualifications

Mike's primary responsibility at Drexel University is faculty development and consultation when it comes to incorporating content management system (CMS) features and functions into face-to-face, blended, or entirely Web-based courses. This is true for Drexel faculty as well as for the faculties and administrators of seven partner institutions in their shared CMS (ASP model) environment. He has made numerous conference presentations on teaching effectively online, assisting faculty in entering and succeeding in the online learning world, and conducted conference workshops on this and related topics. Mike recently had one of his conference papers selected (along with 12 others) from over 800 submissions to receive an Outstanding Paper award. Mike has taught completely online courses for over five years at the graduate and undergraduate levels in a variety of programs and in no less than five CMS applications. He has been engaged with students throughout the United States and around the world in these online courses.
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