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Increasingly, faculty who teach an online course may not be the ones who actually designed the course. Thus, current measurements, especially those that focus on course design and innovation, are not appropriate tools for assessing these faculty members. Instead, the authors assert: "We must look at the actions performed by the instructors within the course." The objective of the authors' study was "to identify a set of criteria that would yield objective data easily examined by supervisors and peers during an online course observation and serve as a balance to the more subjective data gathered from student surveys." The authors identified six questions to be used as a starting point for evaluating online instructors. These questions are copied below verbatim: Has the instructor logged in at least an average of every other day? Has the instructor posted a biography of at least a paragraph, in addition to contact info? Has the instructor posted announcements at least weekly? Is there evidence that the instructor answers student inquiries in two days or less? Does the instructor participate in discussion forums where appropriate? Does the instructor provide feedback on assignments? This article is an excellent resource because it clearly delineates between design and instruction. It also provides the six very concrete questions to use when evaluating instructors.

e-learning challenge which asked course designers to share their favorite examples of quotes, phrases, and questions they don't like hearing. The examples are moving, so prepare to smile, chuckle, and possibly cry. I espacially like Jason Morris infografic: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47068554/eLearning_Hero_Challenge.png

Blended learning course design entails more than simply converting content for online delivery or finding ways to supplement an existing face-to-face course. Ideally, designing a blended course would begin with identifying learning outcomes and topics, creating assignments and activities, determining how interaction will occur, and selecting the technologies to best achieve those learning outcomes.

Blended or hybrid learning, an instructional delivery mode in which instruction is conducted partly online and partly face-to-face, has emerged as one of the fastest-growing and most successful instructional models to deliver flexible learning options for today's learners. This site I think would serve us instructional designers who, after this MOOC would have to deliver professional development training to our faculty. This, together with the course materials in BlendKit would make for an awesome PD experience.

Whether you are new to Gagne's 9 Events of Instruction or well versed in this area, this is a great resource that includes examples of how to apply this to online or hybrid (blended) course design.

Blended learning does not simply involve shifting portions of face-to-face instruction Faculty Focus is a free e-newsletter and website that publishes articles on effective teaching strategies for the college classroom. This articles explains the re-conceptualization of the learning process in a hybrid course, as well as, detailing the steps of the ADDIE method (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation).

"Curt Bonk, Professor in Instructional Systems Technology, Indiana University, in a video series addressing the design and best practices of Distance Education courses. The videos are about 10 minutes long and each topic is accompanied by a list of useful resources."

Good resource listing steps involved in designing a hybrid course.

This has a nice list of FTF and Online appropriate learning activities. The terms hybrid and blended are used interchangeably to describe a course in which less than half all of the instruction is delivered online. Traditional face-to-face instruction is reduced but not eliminated. With a hybrid course, the goal is to optimize student engagement by taking advantage of the strengths of both the face-to-face and Web-based environments.

Great resource - thanks!

I have found this study case quite interesting. I thing it will be especially useful for those who (like me) have used the ADDIE method for their f2f course design.

Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We've written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students' progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don't perform well on the learning experiences we've designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it's important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance.

Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We've written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students' progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don't perform well on the learning experiences we've designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it's important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance.

I had the same thing happen to me: I was using a model without knowing it was a model! I'm glad I now have vocabulary to describe my work in the classroom.

This presentation from Donna Ziegenfuss of the University of Utah's Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence demonstrates a model and process used in a graduate-level online course based on Dee Fink's approach to 'backwards planning".

Thank you for sharing this and the Fink document below. Donna presented at our Instructional Design summit. I use Fink worksheets with many faculty I work with here at SLCC.

Use this application to develop instructional objectives for your courses and instructional programs.

Thanks so much for this reference. A great resource that I can put to use immediately.

Wow! A wonderful tool! Useful for all persons designing courses. Thank you!

A good simple approach. A three staged process for blended learning design: Absorb - Do - Connect

"The process model consists of three stages: Absorb-During this stage, students are gaining basic knowledge. This can include reading a chapter in the textbook. Do-Students then engage in an activity such as a discussion before the face-to-face session (in the case of a blended course) or a synchronous online session in the case of a totally online course. Connect-Students apply knowledge to real-world situations."

I've helped faculty implement this model in online courses and think it has been very successful. While a model like ADDIE provides a structured approach to designing an entire course, this Absorb, Do, Connect model, along with models like Gagne's 9 events of instruction provide us with models for how to structure individual lessons and keep them consistent.

Always good to be reminded of it!

This article may have been more suited for last week but hey better late than never

The faculty engagement subcommittee has developed a faculty self-assessment for online teaching. Check it out! Over the past year, the faculty Engagement subcommittee has worked on a faculty self-asssesment for online teaching. Carol McQuiggan, an instructional designer at Penn State Harrisburg who manged the process, presented the faculty survey and its results at the SLOAN-C conference in Orlando in November of 2008.

Thanks for sharing this resource Beth! Last year I worked with Carol and two other colleagues to revise/update the content of the tool. The main goal was to align it with the Competencies for Online Teaching (https://www.e-education.psu.edu/files/OnlineTeachingCompetencies_FacEngagementSubcommittee.pdf). In addition, we presented the updated version at SLOAN-C in October to solicit feedback. We implemented some of the changes and are putting other suggestions "on hold" as we investigate a different platform to move the tool to in order to address accessibility issues.