Higher Education Commons^™

Designing Effective Online Courses: Exploring The Relationships Amongst Online Teaching Self-Efficacy, Professional Development, Online Teaching Experience, And Reported Implementation Of Effective Higher Education Online Course Design Practices, Elizabeth Mcmahon

The Interactive Journal of Global Leadership and Learning

How best to prepare and support higher education faculty to design and teach effective online courses is a topic of great significance to higher education institutional leaders and faculty developers. This study explored how hours of professional development along with online teaching and learning experiences were related to online teaching self-efficacy and the extent to which participants reported implementation of effective online course design practices. Using a non-experimental quantitative correlational explanatory research study design, data were collected using a questionnaire. Participants included 104 online faculty from a large public higher education system located in the upper Midwest that includes both …

Information Literacy In A Post-Truth Era, Catherine Baird, Jonathan Howell

Sprague Library Scholarship and Creative Works

The founders of American democracy believed it could not survive without an “informed citizenry”. What does an informed citizenry look like in today’s world? And what role do we have as educators and students to support it?

First, we look at the significant challenges to institutional and media legitimacy that emerged in the second half of the 20th century, which rightfully called attention to the ways longstanding Western knowledge practices excluded marginalized communities and silenced important histories. We ask about the status of norms and mores in the aftermath of this challenge, in an era often called “post-truth.”

Second, we …

What Happens When You Close The Door On Remote Proctoring? Moving Toward Authentic Assessments With A People-Centered Approach, Sarah Silverman, Autumn Caines, Christopher Casey, Belen Garcia De Hurtado, Jessica Riviere, Alfonso Sintjago, Carla Vecchiola

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The COVID-19 pandemic made traditionally proctored in-person exams impossible. This article provides a summary of the arguments against institutional adoption of remote proctoring services with a focus on equity, an account of the decision to avoid remote proctoring on the University of Michigan–Dearborn campus, and conclusions and suggestions for other teaching and learning professionals who would like to take a similar approach. Remote proctoring services require access to technology that not all students are guaranteed to have, can constitute an invasion of privacy for students, and can discriminate against students of color and disabled students. Administrators and teaching and learning …

The Value Of Instructor Interactivity In The Online Classroom, Greg Lucas, Gary Cao, Shaunna Waltemeyer, B. Jean Mandernach, Helen G. Hammond

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

As the number of faculty teaching online continues to grow, so has the interest in and understanding of the role of instructor interaction in the online classroom. Online education provides a unique platform in which course design and teaching are independent factors. Understanding faculty and student perceptions about the shifting role of instructor interaction in the online classroom can provide insight on policies and procedures that can support student learning through student-instructor interaction. Participants included faculty and students responding to an anonymous online survey who indicated “online” as their primary mode of teaching. Three key “value” themes emerged as significantly …

Developing Community-Based Learning In An Action Model Framework: Faculty Reflect On Their Development As Teachers And Scholars, Kathleen M. Cain, Amy Dailey, Kim Davidson, Gretchen Natter, Megan Adamson Sijapati, Divonna M. Stebick

Health Sciences Faculty Publications

Faculty reflect on their participation in a Community-Based Learning (CBL) Fellowship designed to create a community of teachers and scholars immersed in an integrated model of academic-community engagement at a small liberal arts college. The program created a space to grapple with CBL principles together, provided accountability and encouragement, and became a source of support through isolation and tensions. Traditional philosophies of teaching and scholarship were challenged and faculty embraced their roles as partners in advancing social justice.

Pandemic Pivot: A Faculty Development Program For Enhanced Remote Teaching, Heather J. Leslie Dba, Alejandra Lizardo Ma, Ashley Kovacs Ma

Learning Design Center: Staff Scholarship

The novel coronavirus COVID-19 has impacted the higher education sector all over the world and has been most disruptive to residential academic institutions that offer mostly, if not wholly, in-person instruction. Of the 1.5 million college faculty members in the United States, about 70% had never taught a virtual course prior to COVID-19 (Hechinger & Lorin, 2020). During spring 2020, colleges had to pivot to remote instruction without much notice for faculty or students to prepare. Some referred to this as “emergency remote teaching” as it did not allow adequate time to thoughtfully plan out a course for a remote …

Implementation Plans For Course Redesigns: An Exploration Of Identified Strategies, Rebecca Campbell, Benjamin Blankenship

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Institutions are redesigning gateway courses—lower-division courses known to create student success bottlenecks—to influence persistence and completion goals. These initiatives, student success course redesigns (SSCR), are specialized versions of course design institutes (CDIs). This investigation into SSCRs uses content analysis to examine the implementation plans created during a SSCR. Results demonstrated that the majority of the strategies planned focused on the Learning key performance indicator (KPI), and the minority of the planned-for strategies focused on the Monitoring Student Performance KPI. A more granular analysis of the Learning strategies revealed five themes: Content, Assessment, Pedagogy, Syllabus, and Student Success. Additional results indicated …

Motivation To “Keep Pushin’”: Insights Into Faculty Development Facilitating Inclusive Pedagogy, Kelly Erby, Melanie Burdick, Sandra Winn Tutwiler, Dan Petersen

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This study focuses on the lived experiences of nine university faculty who were attempting to implement inclusive teaching practices following university-sponsored faculty development. While the participants were each successful in their respective implementations, they all expressed anxiety at the beginning of the semester as well as at the end when they reflected upon the changes they made. This occurred despite deeply held motivations to change their teaching and make a difference for their students. The participants encountered barriers that centered on feelings related to self-confidence, student perception, and peer approval. Findings include descriptions of these anxieties and the supports that …

Exploring Faculty Perceptions Of Professional Development Support For Transitioning To Emergency Remote Teaching, Ana Redstone, Tian Luo

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Professional development (PD) for instructors at higher education institutions offering online courses is important for assuring the quality of online programs. However, PD opportunities for faculty members have often been piecemeal and inadequate. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic that forced instructors around the world to teach online, PD has become even more critical to the success of the instructors, students, and institutions themselves. This paper describes research conducted at a large university in the United States that used a survey developed to operationalize Baran and Correia’s (2014) holistic Professional Development Framework for Online Teaching (PDFOT). The survey identified strengths …