The Road to Online Learning
Dr. Roger Von Holzen
Director
Ms Darla Runyon
Assistant Director/Curriculum Design Specialist
Center for Information Technology in Education
Northwest Missouri State University
1
The Leader
The leader is the one who climbs the tallest
tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells,
“Wrong jungle!”
But how do the busy, efficient faculty,
administrators, and staff often respond?
“Shut up! We’re making progress!”
Dr. Dale W. Lick
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Online Courses
The New Gold Standard
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Old Dogs New Tricks
• The Fear Factor
– Colleges and universities are fearful of losing
student enrollment
– Rushing to place curriculum materials out on
the web
– Announce to the world that they offer webbased courses
• Old dogs--correspondence courses
• New tricks--delivered on the web*
4
Shifting the Paradigm
• Center for Information Technology in Education
– Strong support for faculty
• Stipends
• Hardware and software
– Strong push to change the way of looking at
teaching and learning*
5
Historical Background
• 1987 Northwest established its Electronic
Campus
– VAX network of terminals
– Terminals located in every office and dorm
room on campus
• Faculty and student support provided
through Computing Services
• 1997 switched to desktop and notebook
computers*
6
CITE Faculty Support
• Established in 1997
• Funded by the state
• Initial focus on funding faculty efforts to
modularize course materials
– 10% of faculty per year
• Funding in the form of summer stipends
– Target faculty in specific content areas*
7
CITE Faculty Support
• Conduct faculty training
• Assist in the development of:
– course web sites
– web-based courses
– CD-ROM-based learning materials*
8
Software Standards
• Designated software packages center would
support
– purchases
– technical and training assistance
• Financially can't support all software desires
of faculty
• Staff needs to have extensive knowledge of
limited number of software packages in
order to fully assist faculty*
9
Hardware Support
• CITE provides each Northwest faculty
member with a notebook computer
– two to three year rotation cycle
– pecking order for receipt of new notebooks
• Center retains "ownership" of hardware
purchased for faculty
– minimizes duplication of seldom-used hardware
– maximizes array of hardware available for
faculty use*
10
CITE Staff
•
•
•
•
Director
Assistant director/curriculum design specialist
Computer specialist
Student Help
– Some funding designated for faculty stipends
switched to student support for individual faculty
members
– Encourage department internships and independent
study projects*
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Ownership Policy
• Ownership. If a faculty member receives University support (for
example, CITE Fellowships, Culture of Quality grants, reassigned
time) then the materials developed (for example, modular courses,
musical scores, computer programs, course-related materials, books,
curricular materials, photographs) will be considered to be jointly
owned by Northwest and the faculty member.
• Jointly owned means:
• Both parties are entitled to utilize the materials and their derivatives.
• Both parties retain copyright and physical ownership in the event the faculty
member is no longer employed by the University.
• Royalties from commercial sale and/or use of the materials and their
derivatives will be split with the University receiving 50% and the faculty
member(s) receiving 50%.
• A faculty member has the option to negotiate an alternate agreement
with the Provost’s office.*
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Course Management Software
• Software that enables faculty to disseminate
course materials online
– No need to create course web pages
• Communication resources
– E-mail
– Threaded discussions
– Chat sessions
• Online assessment
– Quizzes and surveys
– Gradebook*
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Course Management Software
•
•
•
•
Comprehensive student tracking options
Digital dropbox
Tracking of access and usage
Major web-based course management
software
– WebCT
– Blackboard’s CourseInfo
– eCollege.com*
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Northwest Online
• The “virtual campus” for Northwest
• Address: http://www.NorthwestOnline.org
• Hosted by eCollege.com
– BS in Business Management degree completion
program
– High enrollment in summer courses
– Have 17 courses online this fall
– Adding Accounting 2001*
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CourseInfo
• Supplemental course management software
• Hosted by Northwest
• Over 400 academic courses currently utilizing
supplemental web resources
• Approximately 1/2 of Northwest faculty involved
• Over 17% of Spring 2000 courses on campus
utilized CourseInfo*
• Means to introduce faculty to online learning
environment*
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One Step Back
• First step toward the new gold standard
– EXPECT STUDENTS TO READ THE COURSE
TEXTBOOK!
– All too often instructors simply rehash textbook
materials in the lecture notes
• Instructor no longer deliverer of course content
(done by the textbook)
– Online “lectures” should be used to:
• Summarize course content
• Explain in greater depth important, difficult course
content*
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Getting Started
• Provide students with detailed instructions
on how to get started in the course
• Provide clear, intuitive site navigation
• Provide detailed syllabus
– Comprehensive schedule
• Readings
• Assignments
• Discussion forum
– Clear descriptions
• Point distributions
• Grading criteria--assignments and forum postings*
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Getting Started
• Timely feedback
– Exams
– Forum postings
– E-mail
• Logical organization of course content
– By week
– By module
• Most flexible for courses offered over varying
lengths of time: spring semester and summer*
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Let Addison-Wesley Do the Work
• Early in the process of establishing an online
course, explore what supplemental materials the
textbook publishers provide
• Lower division courses: an array of materials
• Often available for free or included with purchase
of the textbook
• Upper division courses may not have much
available
– Ask publisher if you can place materials on the web
• Will need to develop materials with assistance
from faculty technology center*
22
Two Steps Forward
• Need to redesign course from the ground up
– Can’t simply translate course from classroom to online
environment
– Need to employ the features of this new medium
• Emphasis on active learning
– Students work with the subject matter
•
•
•
•
Analyzing scenarios
Making choices
Creating answers
Evaluating each other’s work
• Can easily incorporate existing digital materials
such as PowerPoint presentations, Word handouts,
maps, and pictures*
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Two Steps Forward
• Instructor assumes the role of mentor to the
students
• Allows replacement of the traditional oneto-many classroom communication mode
with one-to-one exchanges
• Fear of e-mail overload?
– Sign of poorly designed course
– Attempt to anticipate questions during course
design phase
– Preempt with class-wide e-mail messages*
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Two Steps Forward
• Chat Rooms
– May be used for synchronous online office hours
• Found to be ineffective
• Threaded Discussions
– Vary with the nature of the course materials
– Typically one discussion topic per
module/chapter/unit
– Assign points to encourage participation
• 10%-20% of overall grade
– Provide opportunity for non-academic discussion
forum to promote community building*
25
Course Development Efforts
• Redirect effort from generating course
lecture materials
• Focus on the creation of tutorial modules
• Modules
– Short, very focused tutorials incorporating audio, video,
text, animation
– Concentrate on areas within the course content which
students historically have had trouble
– Use instructor's expertise, experience and talent in order
to generate true "teaching" opportunities*
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Tutorial Modules
• Produced using PowerPoint, Macromedia
Director, or Toolbook II software
• Should incorporate extensive amount of
interactivity
– Self-paced
– Allow interaction with examples and linked
materials
• Highlight critical content areas beyond the
textbook or that reflect instructor's unique
approach to the problem*
27
Tutorial Examples
• PowerPoint
• Director
– Cell Division
– Seasons
– Music Appreciation
• Tegrity
• Toolbook II
• Journalism*
28
Beyond the Rhetoric
• Need to move beyond the use of quizzes
and tests as evaluation mechanisms
• Use quizzes and tests as interactive
mentoring opportunities
– Enable students to evaluate their own progress
through the course materials
– Provide feedback on course content areas that
need further enhancement and/or development*
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Beyond the Rhetoric
• Quizzes and tests should be viewed as
means of promoting learning
– Open book and extensive testing time
• Should be only a small component of the
overall assessment strategy for the online
course
• Evolution from seat-time/credit hours to
outcomes-based education
– Acknowledging present reality*
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Key to Success
• Strong support from the administration
– Budget
– Status of online faculty
• Strong support from faculty
– Interest in participating in projects
• Rapid integration into university-wide
initiatives*
31
Marketing
• Key component that is often forgotten
– Need for both internal and external marketing
• Targeted marketing plan needed
– Coordinate plans with other campus units
• Devise a marketing budget
• Generate advertising materials
– Example*
32
Making the Transition
• These steps should help assist in obtaining
the paradigm shift
– Not all courses, though, can or should be
moved to the web
• The steps should work with most instructors
– Not every instructor, though, can comfortably
leave behind the ornaments of traditional
teaching methodology*
33
Making the Transition
• The steps should help create highly
interactive web courses
– Not likely to be successful unless both the
instructor and students become involved in the
whole learning process*
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Why the New Gold Standard?
•
•
•
•
•
Redesign of course curriculum
Emphasis on active learning and problem solving
Development of innovative course materials
Reliance on interactive communications
Focus on individualized instruction and
independent learning skills
• Use of technology to provide multiple ways of
presenting instruction
• Performance of internal and external quality
reviews*
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Dr. Roger Von Holzen
rvh@mail.nwmissouri.edu
Ms Darla Runyon
drunyon@mail.nwmissouri.edu
http://www.nwmissouri.edu
http://www.nwmissouri.edu/~cite
http://www.NorthwestOnline.org
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