FEP: Self Examination of Committee Participation – Slam Dunk!
To complete an FEP each faculty member must engage in a self-examination of “THREE REQUIRED AREAS”:
- GOVERNANCE AND/OR COMMITTEE PARTICIPATION AT THE COLLEGE AND/OR DISTRICT LEVELS
I currently serve as an assistant chair/eCourses coordinator for the English Department and work with faculty to create and/or improve their online/hybrid courses. I also evaluate all online/hybrid instructors and courses in the English department. I serve on the eCourse Committee and the CTLE Advisory Committee on campus. As part of the duties of the CTLE Advisory committee, I’m currently serving on a hiring committee to hire a Coordinator of Technology Training for the CTLE. Yes, we are still working on this – round 2. This group was also responsible for writing the job description for the new Faculty Lead for the CTLE and hiring the new Instructional Designer.
For eCourses, I volunteered to help create an eCourses Student Orientation (what was I thinking?) and am slowing working on that. We have a few modules already completed and hope to finish before fall. I helped Leah with the HLC paperwork for our online courses in the fall. I also helped by doing 3 online course reviews for the eGCC Gold Reviews.
I serve on a district committee, Academic Technology Alliance (ATA), that meets monthly in addition to smaller subcommittee activities. The main objective of the ATA is to identify and strategically implement effective learning technologies across all ten colleges in the district. I’m on a subcommittee looking at Reusable Learning Object creation tools, like Softchalk (interactive lesson authoring). The ATA submitted three proposals to ITTGC that were accepted and are in process of going out for RFP.
- Plagiarism Detection Tools (RFP process) recently presented to IITGC by ATA for RFP Funding has been approved.
- Interactive Lessons Authoring (RFP process) recently presented to IITGC by ATA for RFP Funding has been approved.
- HD Standards and Services (RFP process) recently presented to IITGC by ITLC for RFP Funding has been approved.
We were told that our committee was the most active and accomplished the most in the first year of this new IT governance model. It feels good to know that we are doing things to help make teaching and learning better for all faculty in the district.
I have the motto of “no meetings where nothing gets done.” I hate to sit around and listen to people to talk about doing stuff and doing nothing. I chose my committee assignments based on the knowledge that these committees do and don’t just talk. I was present for most of the meetings this semester and actually looked forward to going.
FEP: Self Examination of Teaching – ENG101/ENG102 Course Shells/Guides
To complete an FEP each faculty member must engage in a self-examination of “THREE REQUIRED AREAS”:
- TEACHING (OR OTHER PRIMARY DUTIES). For example, instructional or service delivery, content expertise, classroom or program management, instruction/program design.
This is the first of my three required areas for self-examination. Teaching. I will focus on content expertise. I’ve been teaching online for 14 years, so I’ve become somewhat of an expert in online course development. One of the good things about becoming involved with online teaching is it brings me back to the basics of teaching and learning and course design. What I mean by that is that so much scrutiny has been placed on online teaching and online classes. For instance, in order to teach online, one must be properly trained in Quality Matters standards and have a course review after their course is developed. This is not expected of any other instructor teaching at the college, only online instructors. As a result I’ve been able to master instructional design and online course development. One of the projects I’ve been working on since transferring over to GCC is building ENG101 and ENG102 course shells and teaching guides for adjunct instructors. The course shells have been a work in progress for several years now, but the gist of the project is to make available full courses for adjuncts to use as guides for teaching their own courses.
The course shells and teaching guides include full syllabi and full course modules with included assignments, readings, class activities, and quizzes. The course shells can be used in whole or in part depending on what the instructors need. When I designed the courses, I used my knowledge of instructional design for online, hybrid and face-to-face instruction, so no matter what the mode an instructor may teach, the course shells will be a good place to start.
One key concept of designing good online classes is modularization. You can read more about how A Modular Course Design Benefits Online Instructors and Students. I figured if it works for online, why wouldn’t it work for face-to-face classes as well. So I designed the course shells using modules that incorporate the same types of components in each course module. Faculty could then pick and choose which modules they wanted to use. Modules were developed around a 3-4 week period. In the ENG101 each module included 2 assignments, handbook activity (grammar practice), journal posts, discussion forum, an essay and a module quiz. Have a look at the complete modules overview page for ENG101. Below is a screenshot of Module II from the fall semester.
The course shells were designed in Word documents as well as placed in a Blackboard course shell and shared with both full-time and adjunct faculty in the department. So if someone wanted to use the course management system if was already set up and organized for him/her. We currently have 22 people who have access to the Blackboard course shell. This semester I spend considerable time converting the Bb course shells over to Canvas. ENG102 is ready, but I’m still working on ENG101. With the move to Canvas, I’ve been working on rewriting/writing better learning objectives for both courses.
FEP: Survey Says: Podcasts & Screencast are Helpful
So for my FEP (Faculty Evaluation Plan) this year, I decided to work on improving instruction in my online courses. It seemed appropriate and easy to measure, so I went for it. You can learn more about the FEP in future posts, as it is due June 30th, and I’ll be posting it all here. For now, I just want to jump to the end and talk briefly about the results.
The plan involves creating more podcasts (video and audio) and screencasts to provide additional instruction for students in the online course. I had a few of each in the past, but I didn’t have something for every assignment. This semester I committed to at least one visual/audio aide per lesson and a weekly podcast. I wanted to see if students found them helpful to their success in the class. The screencasts usually walk students through the process of doing the week’s assignment. An example of this is when students are assigned to search the databases in the library for periodical articles, I created a screencast that shows them how to access the databases, log in from home and search successfully using the advanced search tool. Other instructional videos included how to write opposing views and counter arguments and other such skills needed to write an argumentative essay.
The weekly podcasts were weekly updates and guidance announcements that let students know where they should be in the process, as well as updates about upcoming assignments and due dates. Here is an example of a weekly podcast from my ENG102 online class.
Students were exposed to these podcasts and screencasts all semester long, so at the end of the class I surveyed them to see how useful they found them to be. The results were not surprising, as you can see below.When asked if the weekly podcasts in the course were helpful, 56% strongly agree and 37% agree that they were helpful. Only 6% responded that they neither agreed or disagreed with that statement. When asked if the screencasts in the course were helpful, 62% said they strongly agreed and 18% agreed that the screencasts were helpful. Six percent didn’t feel the need to watch them and 12% neither agreed or disagreed that they were helpful.
Nintey-three percent also stated that they preferred Canvas over Blackboard.
