Through Online Teaching
Dr. Joan D. McMahon, Professor
Human Resource Development program
Towson University
8000 York Road
Towson, MD 21252
mcmahon@towson.edu
This paper focuses on how the design and delivery of online courses helped to change the infrastructure and cultural issues of a campus. Online teaching became the vehicle for rapid transformational change. The paper was originally presented at the International Conference on Learning with Technology, Philadelphia, PA, March 8-10, 2000.
Background
In 1997 Towson University adopted WebCT (WebCourseTool) in a pilot project to decide to what extent it would and could support online instruction. It started at the grassroots level with a Computer Science faculty member who recommended WebCT for online instruction within the campus. The newly created Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology (CIAT) provided support and brown bag lunches on the use of the software for instruction. It quickly caught on as other faculty began using it as a way to solve instructional problems.
WebCT provided a format whereby hybrid delivery was possible. Hybrid delivery, for our campus, was the equivalent of 30% delivery of course material online. Faculty offered some instructional content and methods using the Web. Some courses were designed so that students only came to campus on occasion. At that time, fully developed online Web courses were not offered.
In May, 1999 Towson University moved from WebCT to Blackboard’s CourseInfo software for its ease in use.
The Provost’s Web Initiative
The Provost set up a Web Initiative in September, 1999 by funding 22 faculty stipends for full online course development. He later added a Teaching Assistant to work with faculty with special needs. The funding was provided for the Fall, 1999 semester with an expectation that courses would be designed and implemented by Spring, 2000. Some faculty were not able to develop full online courses in less than one semester; most would have a hybrid version. CIAT provided instructional and technical support for this project through a Distributed Learning team composed of CIAT professional staff. Three new professionals were added to the Center as a result of this initiative.
As we used the CourseInfo software for Web delivery in the Fall, 1999 we uncovered issues in orientation of faculty and students, enrollment issues, workload issues, instructional design concepts, intellectual property issues, software incompatibility, and infrastructure server concerns. These were categorized under major areas of the university infrastructure which were interdependent on one another.
Administrative Support
The Adminstration funded and staffed the Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology (discussed later under Instructional Support) which was central to the success of the transformational process. But other Administrative issues either needed to be redesigned or readjusted (see Figure 2).
In listing courses that had a significant online component, the course schedule catalog had to be redesigned to include new section numbers so that students could differentiate a course taught in a traditional format from those offering a web component. These were coded as sections 250-254. Hence a PSYC 644.250 course would show students that the course would significantly use the Web. However there was no formal orientation or training to the students (or to the chairs and administrative assistants who submitted the schedules) about what these section numbers really meant except with a brief listing of them in the schedule catalog. We found it helpful to also include “special permit required” with each Web course listing so that faculty could screen the students to make sure they knew what was being covered and what the technical requirements were before they enrolled. Screening questions and procedures were not uniform but did get polished within one semester. This enabled qualified persons to enroll in the courses.
Tuition Remission
Faculty, faculty dependents and university staff were always denied tuition remission for courses offered in “alternate formats.” Previously this meant courses that required 1:1 teaching, such as voice lessons or those that were offered through independent study or travel abroad. Web enhanced courses were considered an alternative format. Those eligible for tuition remission were denied access to these Web “alternative” courses. The issue was sent to the President’s staff immediately and the tuition remission policy was adjusted for Web courses.
New Views on Promotion and Tenure
The process of designing a new delivery format or even a new course in a new delivery format soon showed that there needed to be an expanded interpretation of the “scholarship of teaching.” No longer was the faculty member simply posting their syllabus to the web and calling their course “online.” Through CIAT sponsored panel discussions with faculty leaders using CourseInfo, other faculty began to see roles shift from knowledge expert to knowledge validator; from teacher to learning specialist; from lecturer to coach/mentor. These shifts required new thinking about teaching and learning. It required new ways to hold class discussions and new ways to ask questions. It challenged new ways to assess learning. This was a lot of WORK! This workload took away time from the traditional writing and research usually required of faculty for promotion and tenure. While the policies have not yet changed to reflect this, the dialog on campus has started. The positive changes in teaching are being reflected in student evaluations, which count on promotion and tenure decisions.
Administrative Issues on Course Approvals
The administration appoints a faculty committee to review all new course requests. In our startup pilots in either WebCT or CourseInfo, each course was not new, but rather was a course offered in a new format – a new delivery system. On the surface, it didn’t appear that approval by the University Curriculum Committee was needed. But in most instances, the Web version began to illustrate some serious flaws in the curriculum infrastructure. For example, as the Web course was being developed, there was no quality control on issues such as syllabus design. Course and curriculum development were unclear in online teaching, with the same standards of face-to-face teaching being applied.
The course syllabi didn’t match the university catalog description (the official description of the course); the course objectives varied from those in traditional sections of the same course; the content was different; the assignments were different from traditional courses. In fact there became a question of whether the web version was the same course at all!
This then raised larger issues about course approvals, monitoring quality control, etc. The Human Resource Development Master’s program (HRD) actually used this as an opportunity to re-examine course development. They used a template developed by the Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology which provided instructional support. All HRD generic syllabi would be posted on the web and links made to the course catalog description, the course objectives, a general content outline, the general assignments required, and other required resources. The professor’s interpretation of this general course syllabus followed afterwards as a faculty schedule for the course. In this schedule, the faculty posted all things that were unique to a specific section of the course and posted those things that changed each semester, i.e. texts, name of professor, office hours, schedule of topics and in what order, details of the assignments, etc. Therefore when the generic course syllabus was posted to the web as a link from the department home page, students saw a uniform description of what the course was about. If they wanted to “pay” for the course, they got the schedule, which was the faculty member’s interpretation of the course, which protected the intellectual property of that professor.
Administrative funding for Teaching Assistants
While the Provost’s office provided funding for a teaching assistant as part of the Provost’s Web Initiative, the staffing and training of the TA was done by the instructional support arm of the university, the Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology (CIAT). Three TA’s are expected in the future to work on issues such as file conversion, file management, grade posting, and other technical issues which required too much time for a single faculty member to do.
Instructional Support
Course Development and Design
The Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology grew during these two years from a professional staff of 3 to a staff of 14. This was largely due to the increased need by the faculty for graphic and technical support for instruction (not solely due to online teaching). Workshops were an integral part of the Center’s activities, even for those not using a Web delivery method.
But as the CIAT professional staff worked closely with the faculty, they began to see that the basics of good, sound instructional design (ISD) were missing from faculty planning. CIAT workshops began to shift to include more comprehensive instructional design elements.
The CIAT’s professional staff of instructional designers continued to work with the faculty on translating traditional courses into web format, plus they worked on the design of new courses. Transformational learning about teaching was central to the Center’s activities. But Web course software began to drive the reshaping of sound instructional design at a speed never before experienced.
Knowing that faculty still found WebCT cumbersome and technically difficult to use, (we had only 10 active WebCT accounts) CIAT reviewed web course software and switched to Blackboard’s CourseInfo in May, 1999. By January, 2000 we had jumped to 300 accounts. Faculty found CourseInfo easier to learn, so they used it voluntarily. We assessed the skill level of the faculty in developing and implementing Web courses through a checklist inventory which made faculty training more focused.
Through instructional design processes generic teaching materials and templates were developed to solve instructional problems. These were assembled into a Toolbox which included items such as tips for handling online discussions, suggestions for online assignments, checklists for student orientation and tips for faculty time management.
We found that developing a generic course syllabus provided essential information for students to make decisions about whether to enroll in the course. The templates were made available to new faculty and adjuncts who were encouraged to follow the generic syllabus with their academic interpretation of it listed in a separate course schedule. It included the sound basics of instructional design: course objectives; content outline; and course assessments.
Other training materials were developed and used in faculty workshops. The focus was on instructional course design where outcomes matched assessments, test design and grading rubrics were matched to outcomes, and teaching philosophy was explained in new ways.
Instructional Support and Course Approvals
As faculty designed web courses for course approval, they were able to use the services of two CIAT instructional designers. This became transformational in that many faculty had never been trained on instructional design strategies. As they attended workshops and received 1:1 training, the quality of the instructional development process improved. This had an impact on the quality of courses approved by the departments and University Curriculum Committees.
Instructional Support and Promotion and Tenure
While the CIAT did not directly deal with issues surrounding P & T, the impact was felt as better courses were designed and peers used the Center’s facilities. Faculty had to be trained on new ways to think of themselves and their relationship between the subject matter and new ways to relate to their students. Assessments had to be re-thought. Peers saw what it took to change teaching. Peers experienced what the “scholarship of teaching” was all about. This began to affect the departments’ dialog toward defining and rewarding scholarship differently.
Instructional Support for the CourseInfo Server
Within 8 months three servers were dedicated just to deliver CourseInfo accounts. With the accounts having grown from 30 in June 99 to over 300 within six months, two full time professionals were assigned responsibility for technical and instructional assistance. Issues involving software incompatibility with Macs and PCs were handled by them in cooperation with Blackboard’s technical team.
As CIAT professional staff were handling technical and instructional issues, we also needed additional support from Computing and Network Services.
Technical Support viaComputing and Network Services (CANS)
Support for Students
CANS assigned two fulltime persons to the Student Computing Services Center. This group provided online tutorials, face-to-face workshops, and online inventories and forms. Faculty could now send students to labs and workshops to receive technical training in software that they recommended or required for classes. Faculty didn’t have to take time out of class to teach technical skills they were unprepared to teach. (Faculty were just learning the software themselves!)
Server and Helpdesk Support
When we started with WebCT, CANS would not support a server. In fact, the first server for Web instruction was in that Computer Science faculty’s office. Only when the server failed, did CANS provide technical assistance.
Once CANS saw the impact of online learning and the unexpected load on the CourseInfo server, they replaced the server with three new ones and provided helpdesk and student support. They now provide technical support to both students and faculty during days, evenings and weekends. They also provide hardware support, backups and networking
Figure 4: Technical Support
Summary
Within a two year period of time, the infrastructure at Towson University made rapid change with the onset of Web based teaching. Administrative issues of listing courses, course approval, tuition remission, and promotion and tenure policies were reexamined. Administrative funding and staffing also supported the Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology which provided instructional design and technical support for course delivery software. The computing infrastructure served faculty and students by providing dedicated servers, helpdesk support during day, evening and weekend hours and student training on software (see Figure 4). When Web course delivery became a realistic and feasible option for instruction, the interdependent cooperation of these three arms of the University helped to transform the culture and infrastructure of the campus.
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Dr. Joan D. McMahon is Professor of Human Resource Development and the Faculty Coordinator at the Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology. She teaches online courses and designs instructional training materials for faculty.
Email: mcmahon@towson.edu.