Nearly four years ago, Provost Radke asked that a UCO Distance Education Taskforce be assembled for the purpose of determining the role of distance education at the University, as well as the structures and procedures that needed to be in place to ensure that the effort added value to UCO educational products. The Taskforce recommendations were simple yet profound: have an intentional plan for the role of distance education, and fund the effort for success in helping UCO achieve its mission.
In October 2006, the Center for Professional and Distance Education (CPDE) was born. One of the major aims of that organization is to create structures that will help faculty members develop quality online courses, as well as to help them make the sizable leap from teaching in the classroom to teaching online. CPDE utilizes an Online Education Design Team to achieve those ends. The Team, consisting of a Director of Online Education, three Instructional Designers, an Instructional Technology professional, an E-learning Librarian (in cooperation with the Chambers Library), as well as numerous other support staff, works diligently to ensure that the services they provide to the faculty, staff, and students are based on best practices in online education. To that end, the Team has developed some very unique interventions.
The Distance Educators Design Workshop is an intensive mix of technology training to help participants master the University’s Learning Management System (LMS), resources to help participants learn about and implement the latest in best practices for online teaching and learning, and practical exercises to hone skills and build course elements. This is a hybrid workshop, and includes online lessons, group collaboration and skill building sessions, and one-on-one meetings with experienced instructional designers—all geared toward building rigorous, high quality distance education courses. The courses created in this processes are reviewed by a faculty-constructed and faculty-administered UCOnline Quality Rubric. All courses are required to pass that review before they are able to enroll students. Course-quality and online teaching requirements are outlined in the Academic Affairs Online Course Quality policy (AA Policy 3.8).
The Distance Educators Online Teaching Workshop is an opportunity for participants to customize a “UCOnline Quality” course created in the design workshop while exploring the latest best practices for online teaching and learning. This workshop is a true online course, with all lessons and resources available asynchronously. Participants collaborate through discussions, assignments, and peer review of lessons. Participants have the opportunity to experience distance education both as student and instructor through exercises designed to strengthen online teaching skills. Beginning fall 2010, all UCO instructors wishing to teach online must have gone through this training.
The Team also devotes much time to developing resources for distance education students. Participants are given a wide range of tools designed to support their online students. These re
sources include skill-building “now you try it” tutorials for the University’s LMS, online FAQs, and customized course orientation modules. These resources are designed to allow instructors to concentrate on course learning objectives rather than on teaching students how to use distance education technologies.
As of the writing of this entry, the CPDE Design Team has assisted faculty in creating nearly 120 new online courses. Nearly 120 faculty members have successfully completed the teaching workshop. And the CPDE Design Team members have presented the UCO model at a number of national conferences.
The entire CPDE team is thankful for the opportunity to serve the UCO community. We value input from all stakeholders. Please let us know what you think—what you like—what you don’t like—what we might do to serve you better.
