Quality Enhancement Plan
GOAL 10
GOAL 10: The College will establish a continuous, appropriate improvement process for faculty teaching online courses.
For online courses to be successful, the instructors need to have the appropriate technological skills and pedagogical knowledge. The purpose of this goal is to make sure that all instructors are able to develop, maintain, and improve their abilities. The Course Development subcommittee noted that faculty should realize the online teaching experience to be both personally satisfying and professionally valuable. Factors that contribute to faculty satisfaction should include support, rewards, and institutional study/research (Moore and Bourne). Support should consist of reliable and dependable technical/infrastructure hardware and software, training and instructional assistance, and administrative backing. These aspects are precisely what this goal addresses.
The infrastructure requirements are addressed above in the discussion of Goal 2. Goal 10 will ensure that faculty will receive the training and skill development or improvement opportunities they need to keep their abilities as sharp as possible.
Objective 1 – Year One: Identify the technological and pedagogical skills needed by a faculty member to teach online courses.
None of the subcommittees had as part of its charge the responsibility to identify the skills called for in this objective. However, a substantial body of extant literature dealing with the subject awaits exploration by those individuals who are given this task. The College should have no difficulty assembling a list of both pedagogical and technological skills researchers and theorists deem essential for instructors of online courses.
Objective 2 – Year Two through Five: The faculty member annually conducts his/her review of technological and pedagogical skills in teaching online courses.
Once the list of requisite skills is determined through the previous objective, all online instructors will be asked to conduct an audit each year in which the instructors compare their own skills to those on the list. This process is intended to reveal to each instructor any knowledge or skills which need updated or improved or to reveal aspects of the course which should be revised to reflect the best-practices model of online pedagogy.
Objective 3 – Year Two through Five: Incorporate feedback from the sources listed in Objective 2 – Year Two through Five and report to the appropriate Dean.
The purpose of this objective is to see that any improvements in skills, knowledge, or course design indicated by the annual audit are in fact made. It will be up to the dean who oversees the particular online course to see that each faculty member revises the course in the ways indicated by the annual review.
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