Providing professional development for blended and online learning that creates the opportunity for connection and personalization is our goal. We recently launched our professional development model called Coffee and Course Design. In this session will share how our newest endeavor of providing an active learning space that enables the participants to connect, share, and design for their online or blended learning environment using Quality Matters as our framework while having coffee, donuts, and conversation with their colleagues.
"Mix It Up!" will be a real time blended presentation demonstrating the combination of emerging technologies that can be used to provide professional development (PD) for faculty teaching blended and online courses meeting many expectations of the Quality Matters framework. Tools for sharing content for online learning that are engaging and interactive will be shared as well as our successes, challenges, and lessons learned from using the tools.
How can we help all faculty meet some of the QM Standards in every LMS course automatically? How do we keep the content and references up to date when courses are rolled or copied for upcoming semesters? This session will cover the solution a team of instructional designers and technologists created and what we included to cover all of General Standard 7 plus 4 other standards.
How can online instructors maximize the power of digital tools to cultivate QM Standards 5.2 and 6.2 for student engagement and active learning in an engaging online learning experience? We will peruse the digital tool buffet and sample a collection of tools just right for cultivating QM Standards 5.2 and 6.2 for the online course! We will start with an "appetizer" of general strategies, move to an "entree" of digital tools, and end with a sweet "dessert" application to our own online courses.
UWF became a Quality Matters Institution in 2010. At that time, there was a concern among administrators that online courses were not meeting the same standards of quality as face-to-face courses. In the early years, the QM team at UWF was focused on implementation--training reviewers and educating faculty on the benefits of a QM review. After a very successful implementation period, where we have had 80 courses successfully reviewed, we are now moving into a new phase focused on data analysis of results.
The trajectory of QM-focused research has been from describing experience and observations (such as impact on satisfaction), to exploring narrowing foci (such as interaction), to applying established educational frameworks (such as TPACK and CoI), to correlating data (such as grades). The result is a rich foundational body of research, along with actionable information on the complexities of educational research. To encourage researchers to benefit from these foundations, a framework for finding and using evidence on QM impact will be introduced during this poster session.
Two studies provide evidence of the impact of participating in QM Peer Reviews and QM Professional Development. Data analysis of the QM review exit survey highlights who is making change, not only on their online, but also face-to-face courses. A study done by researchers at The University of Pittsburgh explored the impact of QM PD workshops and courses on faculty's pedagogical practices in online, face-to-face, and blended instructional modes. Both studies point to participating in QM PD impacts teaching across delivery formats.
Avoid overthinking the online course objectives writing process. Instead, consider a “go to” course alignment matrix resource to help you organize and categorize information needed to align your course content. Identifying your course level and module level objectives as they relate to assessment and instructional materials provides a clear path to alignment. Clear direction is good just as Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”
