Pay It Forward: Taking What You Learn at OLC Back to Your Institution

Concurrent Session 4

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

Be a resource for your institution! Want to share the knowledge gained from your OLC Online Learning Certification with your faculty? Pellissippi State Community College presents how we transformed knowledge gained from our OLC certification into scalable professional development opportunities to support the needs of our diverse online faculty groups.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Stephanie Gillespie, Pellissippi State Community Colleg

I earned my Master's in Library and Information Science at Clarion University and Bachelor's in Nonfiction Writing at University of Pittsburgh. I taught English as a Second Language in Hannover, Germany for 5 years before becoming a Research and Instruction Librarian.

Co-presenter: Kellie Toon, Pellissippi State Community College

Co-presenter: Deanne Michaelson, Pellissippi State Community College

Tags

OLC Accelerate 2017 Professional Development and Support Accessibility Approaches Certification Collaboration Competencies Copyright Effectiveness Engagement Faculty Faculty development Faculty roles Faculty well-being Instructor experience Instructors Leadership presence Mentor Models Online Online community Online course development Pedagogy Professional development Quality instruction Rubrics Satisfaction Support Teaching Teaching presence Training Transformation Universal design (UDL) Workload

Extended Abstract

Be a resource for your institution! Want to share the knowledge gained from your OLC Online Learning Certification with your faculty? Leader faculty from Pellissippi State Community College presents how our group transformed the knowledge gained from our OLC certification into scalable professional development opportunities to meet the specific needs of our diverse faculty groups.

 

Our leader faculty group consisted of one faculty member from each department, including Business and Computer Technology, Educational Technology Services, English, Engineering and Media Technologies, Liberal Arts, Library Services, Mathematics, Natural and Behavioral Sciences, and Nursing. Our institution is a two-year community college in Knoxville, TN, with circa 10,000 full- and part-time students. After our main campus, our online campus is the most heavily populated.

 

Questions we will ask attendees via Kahoot:

  • What type of institution do you come from?

  • Does your institution have training for online teachers? If so, what kind of training: in-house, OLC, other? If so, how effective do you think it is?

 

Starting in our OLC course with assessing our institution’s support of online faculty, particularly in regards to satisfying SACSCOC accreditation, we set out to create a series of professional development training tailored to meet specific faculty needs, such as faculty who have little time to devote to professional development, faculty that use 3rd party systems, faculty that don’t use the LMS, faculty who use the LMS but don’t use most of its features, faculty who only teach on-ground, faculty who teach online, etc. We divided the trainings into 3 general areas: learning the LMS, teaching an online course, and specific resources for professional development of online teaching.

 

Questions we will ask attendees via Kahoot:

  • Is training required of online teachers?

  • What are the needs of your faculty?

  • How many of your faculty do you think are using your LMS? If so, to what degree?

 

We first created an asynchronous online course to train faculty to get the most out of our D2L learning environment, which with the full support of our administration, all faculty whether online or on-ground were required to complete. Then, we targeted our faculty teaching online courses. Modelled on the framework and best practices of the OLC Online Teaching Training, we handpicked the curriculum to create a 4-week, asynchronous discussion-based course. Limited to 10-12 faculty per section, there are 4 modules with assignments and self-assessments.

 

Faculty have provided glowing feedback on the training: “The sharing of ideas among the class provided me with some great new ways to engage with my web classes!” “The short modules for each topic and additional reading being available if needed was really helpful. The material was easily digestible and nicely integrated into D2L.” 63% devoted 4-7 hours each week to complete the course, and 73.7% found the time they devoted to the 4-week course a reasonable amount.

 

In providing these professional development learning opportunities, we hoped our faculty would better use the LMS, feel confident in the online learning environment, know how to provide comparable learning in an online course to on-ground course, and offer pedagogical support to faculty new to teaching. We feel satisfied these goals have been met. In the course of this project, we were pleasantly surprised at the effect it’s had on institutional culture and student learning.

 

With new hires every semester and technology changing daily, we realize this project is ongoing. ETS has agreed to update the LMS training; new faculty will continue to be required to complete it, and previously-trained faculty have continued access to the continually updated course. A director of online learning and an instructional designer will be hired. A standing committee has been formed who, as members rotate off, will be required to complete OLC training.

 

We will offer an example module of the training on copyright and give the quiz to participants.

 

Questions we will ask attendees via Kahoot:

  • What have you learned today that you could apply at your institution?