While Augustana has used WebCT and other online course tools, it has never before offered courses completely online.

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1 Final Report: Online Summer Courses (section 5a) Participants: Bob Kiner, Richard Bowman, Evie Brouwer, Jeff Johnson, William Swart, Christy Vandewetering, and Peg Preston The purpose of this 5A grant was to provide faculty development for up to eight faculty in online course instruction. The faculty, with support of the Instructional Technologist, were to begin the process of developing a online courses for delivery in the summer of Background: Augustana has seen more and more students opting to take general education courses from other institutions during the summer. This results in Augustana losing a measure of control over its curriculum: There is no guarantee that a course taken at another institution will cover the exact material or demand as much from the student as the same course offered through Augustana. Therefore, an effort was made to develop particular general education courses for delivery completely online during the summer. While Augustana has used WebCT and other online course tools, it has never before offered courses completely online. In order to assure the highest possible odds of success, Bob Kiner chose general education courses that would be in demand, chose faculty who were willing to develop those courses, chose a process that would support faculty in the instructional design of those courses, and chose a controlled first time experience (courses enrolment is limited to 12 students per course, for example.) Participants: The faculty who participated were: Richard Bowman (Religion department)... RELI 110 Exploring Christianity Evie Brouwer (Education department)... EDUC 325 Human Relations Jeffrey Johnson (History department)... HIST 121 American Experience Since 1877 Margaret Preston (History department)... HIST 111 Western Civilization William Swart (Sociology department)... NAST 320 Sociology/Native American Studies Christy Vanderwetering (Psychology)... PSYC 125 Lifespan Development In addition, four other faculty have chosen to participate in the faculty development process, even though they are not formally a part of this grant: Perry Hanavan (Education department) Sharon Andrews (Education department) Monica Soukup (Education department) Sherry Barkley (HPER department) Goals: The goal of the faculty development was to allow faculty to become familiar with the terminology related to online courses experience being a student in an online course

2 explore instructional methodologies involved in designing and delivering online courses understand the similarities and differences between WebCT and Moodle as learning management systems (LMSs) become familiar with online courses components/tools gradebooks asynchronous discussion forums synchronous chat rooms assignment drop boxes quizzes and tests resource pages determine which online course components/tools best meet their individual instructional needs understand challenges in delivering online tests/quizzes create an online course using the components and features conducive to teaching their particular subject matter Process: The online WebCT course. A WebCT course was developed entitled Online. Each participant was enrolled as a student in the course. This allowed the participants to experience an online course from a student s perspective. The course included an online discussion forum, links PowerPoint presentations, internal course e- mail, a simple online quiz (with immediate feedback for some questions, and the need for instructor grading and feedback for other questions), a synchronous chat room, an online resources organizer page, and a grade book. An was sent to all participants alerting them to the existence of the WebCT online course, informing them of their usernames and initial passwords, providing detailed instructions for course entry, and encouraging them to take part in the course. Of the eight potential participants (nine, if leader Bob Kiner is included), only one entered the course at this point. Another reminder was sent, and two more participants entered the course. While such low attendance would be a problem in a real course, this is exactly what I, as an instructional designer, expected to happen. There was no incentive for the participants to become active in the WebCT course at this point. They knew there was plenty of time to get started. But, without the participation of the entire group, the three participants who were taking part in the online course could not get as much out of it. I wanted the participants to see, first hand, how difficult it is for students to put the other demands on their time aside in order to access and participate in an online course. I wanted them to fully understand how imperative it is that they, as instructors, design their courses in such a way that students become immediately engaged in the material and involved with the other participants. Finally, I set a time for our initial face-to-face group meeting. This seemed to be what was needed to encourage the rest of the participants to enter the WebCT course. Individual one-on-one meetings. During this same time, I set up appointments to work individually with each participant to create a WebCT course shell that contained tools they felt were most conducive to conveying their particular course material. Each shell was different. As I worked individually with them, I made sure each one had entered the WebCT online course and was participating in it and becoming familiar with the environment.

3 This one-on-one provided the opportunity to tailor the training and the instructor s online course shell to his or her individual needs. It also provided the initial opportunity to get the faculty members thinking about what it is they actually want their students to learn and how they might effectively teach their material and assess their students progress. While teaching in an online environment has certain limitations, it opens up the door to other, creative means of instruction. I tried to help each instructor think creatively about how he or she would like to teach in an online environment.. Face-to-face group meetings. After the WebCT online course had been going for about 3 weeks and after I had met individually with each participant, we scheduled a group face-to-face meeting. Participants were encouraged to share their experiences, if any, with online instruction. Some had taken an online course, some were involved in online degree programs, some had delivered online courses at other institutions, and some were completely new to online courses. The shared insights and experiences were extremely valuable. The group continued to meet once a week from then on, and will likely continue to meet into the summer as the courses are being delivered. At one of our recent face-to-face meeting, we discussed Moodle and how it differs from WebCT. (I had created an online course in Moodle and added the participants as students so that they could experience the Moodle environment.) Richard Swanson attended our Moodle meeting and shared what he s learned of Moodle as a result of his Bush Grant. As a result of that meeting, two faculty members have chosen to design their courses in Moodle. Faculty Development Luncheons. Besides training in the use of WebCT and/or Moodle, it was just as necessary that participants received training in the instructional methodologies involved in designing and delivering online courses. Building Community in Online Courses was a presentation I gave at a Faculty Development Luncheon (which was open to all Augustana faculty, not just participants in the online summer course grant). In that presentation I discussed how today s students have grown up online this environment is very natural to them. In fact, it is we older faculty who are aliens in this Net Generation culture. A sense of community, something that is not always easy to design for, is crucial to a successful online course experience. As Wally Bock said, Communities are characterized by three things: common interests, frequent interaction, and identification. In fact, the word community is derived from two Lain words meaning with gifts," which reflects the sharing and reciprocity necessary for communities (online or otherwise) to work. I refered to an excellent article in the October, 2005 issue of Educause Review, Father Google and Mother IM Confessions of a Net Gen Learner, which discusses the ways in which faculty often fail in their attempts to integrate technology in general. If offers suggestions, from the standpoint of the student (the author is a recent Phi Beta Kappa graduate) for effective integration of technology and use of online resources. From Janette Hill and Arjan Raven s article, Online Learning Communities: If you Build Them, Will They Stay? faculty must consider atmosphere (the instructor should provide a failure-safe environment where mistakes are opportunities for learning, and a spirit of adventure providing a sense of we re all in this together ), foundation (the instructor should incorporate structural dependence and navigational organization, both of which help the student avoid information overload), communication (the instructor and learners should make use of connection messages, both instructor-learner and learner-learner), and technology (the instructor should provide FAQs to students to help them minimize technology glitches.) Projected Outcomes: The projected outcomes for this grant were to:

4 1. Use the Augustana instructional technologist to train six-eight faculty in the design of a course for web based instruction. (This has been completed, although support of the faculty will continue through the actual delivery of their courses this summer.) 2. Provide faculty development in successful teaching strategies for web based courses (This has been completed, although, again, this support will continued through the actual delivery of the courses this summer.) 3. Provide 6-8 web based courses which will be offered in the Summer 2006 Course Catalog (This has been completed. The Summer Catalog, which was recently mailed, includes a listing of the online summer courses on the front cover!) 4. Evaluate the success of the faculty development project in web based course design. (This is still in progress. Faculty members are being asked to write a brief narrative about their experience with this faculty development project. Those narratives will be provided to Arlen Viste, the grant coordinator.) Registrar, Rick Davis, and I met in February to discuss how to make sure that students in the online courses have a positive experience. Among other things, we decided to send a postcard to each student enrolled in an online course providing them with 1) my contact information in case of technical questions and 2) instructions on logging into either WebCT or Moodle. We would then have all of them enrolled in a pseudo-course with the sole purpose being to encourage them to run the WebCT browser tune-up (which determines the browser version and if any pluggins are missing. It then provides links to locations for download of necessary pluggins.) The postcard will tell them they need to test their browser prior to the beginning of the course. The participants jointly presented What I m Going to Do With My Summer Vacation (a portion of a presentation that also included a look at last year s Summer Technology Workshop) at a Faculty Development Luncheon in February. (Report submitted by Sharon Gray)

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