DUST OF SNOW_BY ROBERT FROST_EDITED BY_ TANMOY MISHRA
Online Learning: the SLN experience
1. 2001 recipient of the Sloan-C Award for Excellence in ALN Faculty Development Online Learning The SUNY Learning Network Experience Alejandra M. Pickett Associate Director SUNY Learning Network Faculty Development & Instructional Design
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6. SLN Awards 2000 EDUCAUSE Award for Systemic Progress in Teaching and Learning 2001 Sloan-C award for Excellence in ALN Faculty Development 2002 Sloan-C award for Excellence in Institution-Wide ALN Programming 2003 Sloan-C Award for Excellence in Online Teaching 2006 USDLA 21st Century Best Practice Award - Online Technology - Higher Education 2009 NUTN Distance Education Innovation Award
12. Yesterday 1994-95 research & development period. Objective : what works? We already assumed “no significant difference” http://www.nosignificantdifference.org/ 1995-99 synthesis of models, processes, & procedures, infrastructure, resources, support and services. Objective : will it scale? 1999-05 . . . Full-scale production. Objective : institutionalization, sustainability Where we’ve been…
13. Migration 2006-09 Campus, Course, Faculty, and SLN programmatic migration to ANGEL and new business model. Objective : Will they buy our support and services? What are the benefits of membership? Whom do we serve? 2009 in the last month of our migration BB buys ANGEL. ?? Where we are…
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18. ! SLN’s 5 key elements What I have learned from working with over 3000 SUNY faculty, from 40+ SUNY institutions, and thousands of students since 1994. Model : Rapid Scale: This required that we develop a consistently applied and thoughtful faculty development process. Support : Large numbers: Successful online courses have effective designs and effective/prepared instructors. = Instructional designers, HD, templates. Approaches : Our philosophy: The pedagogy dog wags the technology tail NOT the other way around. Evaluation : Program evaluation and continuous improvements: Iterate! Best practices: what is working, why, what needs to be improved? Quality : Requires a comprehensive approach to training, support, resources, best practices, exemplars, community of practice, template/standards, formal course review/rubric. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
35. ? ? Any questions http://www.slideshare.net/alexandrapickett/
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Notas do Editor
We an example. We don’t have all the answers. Here to share what we know and learn from you too. No need to reinvent the wheel. Learn from our mistakes. Use and adapt our stuff.
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Since 1994 I have trained 3000 fully online faculty and over 90 online instructional designers. We have 4000 fully online courses, 107 online degree programs…100,000 fully online student enrollments.
National survey of student engagement 2008 - Indiana University - George Kuh - online students are more engaged than F2f students http://nsse.iub.edu/ Bernard, Robert M.. Ph.D. http://doe.concordia.ca/Faculty/?page=faculty_list&categoryid=5&facultyid=10 Professor of Education Educational Technology Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance [email_address] Tel: 514-848-2424, Ext. 2027 Office: LB-545-5 Online students out perform f2f students US department of education - evaluation of evidence -based practices in online learning - a meta-analysis and review of online learning studies - 2009 The meta analysis found that on average students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving f2f instruction. http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html#edtech
Define benefits of membership and relevance to campuses in the new decentralized model.
Advisory board, committees, menu of services, what services do we offer as part of the membership and what do we offer to suny for free as a suny-wide program? Ownership/accountability/campus customer satisfaction. How do we appeal to non participating campuses, how are we relevant?
Models : team development, Faculty develop with ID assistance
Packet : SLN Online Faculty Development Program description Online course models, Training continuum, Course design process illustration Challenges : Scalability: How do you get consistently replicable results for course quality, effective faculty? Process. Large scale = chaos = templates and wizard to quick start faculty and inform and influence consistency in course design. Exemplar courses for observation. Buy-in : -Faculty mistrust: use peer lead trainer. Faculty don’t believe this will work: use faculty that have done it successfully be your advocates. Let faculty and their courses speak. -Faculty feel isolated: train as cohort. Build community/share the work/use faculty as training mentors for formative and summative course reviews. Interdisciplinary cohorts of faculty to build community of practice. Access to experienced faculty, opportunities for inter/intra disciplinary networking, peer support/training -Faculty have no online experiences: online course gives them the chance to be in a model course, gives them the perspective of the student, and opportunity to begin in a non threatening way conversation about the issues that concern them most: course ownership, time to develop, support, learning curve, plagiarism, etc. Consistency : -Use faculty and their courses as incubators to learn more about teaching and learning online and to develop best practices to fold back into the program, training, and course design. -Online conference + exemplars + access to experienced faculty + f2f training + online information + HD + pedagogy handbook of best practices + template/standards + individual ID support. -Build culture of continuous improvement and iteration of courses: Training for returning faculty to improve course and teaching – community: to collect best practices and share research results and revise/improve courses.
Critical inquiry in a text-based environment
Theoretical frame work - Includes class community
Contribute to the scholarly work to understand theoretically what works, then trasform that into practice: Sloan-c
Packet: Program description and process illustrations/models Inform our practice with research based findings. Feed it into process, models, approaches, tools, recommendations, fac dev etc.
Support roles : HD, ID, AC/OLDirectors With out support, you can have the most beautiful course, but faculty are not trained well, scalability etc.
Packet: SLN Role of the ID, Expectations/responsibilities, job descriptions, interview materials- questions, candidate scoring sheets. Support of mids, faculty, campuses. Challenges: How do we scale when our model that addresses consistency and quality required 1 on 1 MID support? The need and ability to rapidly scale required that we scale the MID model – extend it to campuses. We could not hire new staff every time we had 20 more faculty to support… the need to extend this to the campuses and still retain the ability to inform quality and maintain consistency required that we develop the mid model as extended SLN staff that we trained, had close contact with and guided through the processes. Faced with limited resources in 1994 (as the program began), rapidly expanding faculty development needs, and a desire to operationalize, scale, and institutionalize sustainable processes to ensure consistent quality and results in course designs, and effective online instructors, I created the role of the campus-based MID. The SLN campus-MID model, is at its simplest a train the trainer model. MIDs not only disseminate the best practices collected or researched in a coordinated and consistent manner, but also contribute themselves to the data collection, evaluation, revision, feedback, and best practices collection loop. Today SLN MIDs are a unique and successful community in the SUNY system, and this role is now institutionalized across SUNY for SLN. They comprise a large community of highly experienced online instructional design professionals all dedicated to the common cause of supporting SLN faculty from all disciplines in the development of their online courses. ACs: To effectively operationalize the a large rapidly growing program we needed a single point of contact with authority on the campus. The role of the AC emerges and evolves into the role of DL coordinator or director which in turn assists in institutionalizing SLN and DL programs on the campus. HD: The need and ability to scale required that we develop centralized tech HD: economies of scale. One HD for faculty and students instead of 64. Centralized support supported consistencies in course navigation/design. Resources/Communications: The need to communicate on large scale/timely communications of lots of processes, procedures, and information resulted in: elaborate process based on roles, broadcast lists, Web info: Faculty center, student commons, MIDcentral, campus center, student and faculty orientations.
Packet: Courses for observation – takeaway- open to you. Faculty course design materials: Course information best practices, and anatomy of a module. Without stable reliable tech, you can have the most beautiful courses with well prepared faculty…. But students can’t access… Technology: How did we do it with a very small staff of 12 ? We got efficient and good at building apps that automated processes. -How did we do it with no CMSs? 1994 there were no course management systems so we built our own. It had to be good. And to be good we had start with a theoretical framework, build our understanding of effective online teaching and learning, and be able to translate that into practice: faculty development, training, templates, etc. Robust, reliable, stable network & technology. Build it. Automate it. Self-service. -How did we deal with Large scale/rapid growth/need for control and quality: Template and wizard to inform and influence course design, consistency for quality and for support Tools: Limited resources dictated that we had to have faculty develop their own courses and know how to do everything to develop, teach manage and revise their own courses. – wizards and templates and automations built in to applications/CMS. Efficient, effective, consistent on a large scale. -Small program staff resulted in an approach to empower campuses with the ability to do stuff, and self service. We got better at being more efficient, we didn’t get bigger. Approaches: -Support and service culture: How did we do it? we built SLN one instructor at a time/one course at a time/one campus at a time. The way we did it was in partnership with campuses, faculty, and staff. -Communicate and be honest. Ask what others think. Ask for help. Do what you say. Say what you do. -Faculty: focus on effective online pedagogy. Faculty-driven course design-- pedagogy not imposed by the CMS application or the instructional designer. Faculty must develop the course themselves. Opportunities for participation in online courses or discussion. Observation of live online courses.
Key differences: The role of the professor - Guide by the side NOT sage on the stage. The role of the student – student centered not teacher centered What is learned – what the learner needs to know – motivated learning How learning occurs – experiential Malcom Knowles / 4 Principles: In design of learning according to Knowles: 1. Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their instruction. Children are sponges. 2. Experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for learning activities for adults. Children are sponges. 3. Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented. Children are sponges. 4. Adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance to their job or personal life. Children are sponges. need to know why they need to learn something. need to learn experientially. approach learning as problem-solving. Strategies such as case studies, role playing, simulations, and self-evaluation are most useful. Instructors adopt a role of facilitator or resource rather than lecturer or grader.
Evaluate : satisfaction and learning surveys, CI meetings, community participation, consensus and decision making
Packet : SLN TP questionnaire and online papers. Both program evaluation and scholarly work to understand and add to the understanding of effective practices in online teaching and learning. Challenges : Different at every stage. But focus on teaching and learning and program. Faculty buy-in: can it be done, is it as good as, who owns my stuff, cheating, etc. Technology and large scale training Campus Buy in: director of DL/OL, integrate into campus operations/processes Changing landscape: Staying current, relevant, adapting to change, blended, migration, course quality and large numbers of “experienced” faculty how do we continuously improve support and services? Commit to the process. Use the info. For program evaluation and improvement, and for improving our understanding of effective practices in online teaching and learning environments 1. Use the program and communities as incubators to collect information, best practices and use them to continuously improve support, services, program. 2. Longitudinal, systematic data collection and analysis --Nationally recognized scholarly work to back us up. To address the issue of quality we needed to know what we were talking about and we needed to build it into everything we do. Observe, collect data, & share best practices.
Packet: New Faculty course review materials, formative and summative checklists, Returning faculty: evaluate, review, and revise your online course , TP and class community course review rubric, and example course formal course review, teaching presence survey self-assessment/diagnostic and supporting materials. All of these elements intersect/overlap. Without one the others fail… dependent on each other for success. Challenges: How do we Inform and influence course quality on a large scale? How do we get returning faculty to revise /improve their courses? how do we affect large numbers of faculty and courses that have already been trained and developed and are resistant to change with new information, best practices and approaches? Wizard to scaffold faculty with an effective quick start course design. Course templates/standards that makes technology and instructional design transparent. Opportunities for reflection, evaluation, and revision. Formal instructional design course reviews. Training. Research.