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| navigate: home: magazine: spring/summer 2000: article | |
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Faculty and instructional designers team up to develop World Campus courses by Ellen P. James | |||||||||||||||||
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With the rapid growth of on-line academic programs on Penn State’s World Campus, an increasing number of Penn State faculty are finding themselves in the company of new colleagues as they zoom down the information superhighway. Traveling with them as they prepare courses for Penn State’s virtual campus are instructional designers from Distance Education and the Center for Academic Computing. “The faculty member is central to the success of each World Campus course,” Dr. Gary Miller, associate vice president for distance education and executive director of the Penn State World Campus, said. “However, because of the current complexity of the on-line environment, most faculty welcome the help of nonteaching professionals. Instructional designers are there to support and help faculty understand the technology and use it to the fullest. From our inception, the World Campus has provided support in partnership with the Center for Academic Computing, which has traditionally helped faculty integrate technology into their on-campus courses. By working together, we can help faculty in both teaching environments.” The World Campus reaches out to students around the world, offering Penn State’s signature academic programs. Each course and program is developed by highly skilled teams of professionals consisting of faculty and staff who work in partnership to ensure that a student learning 30 miles or 3,000 miles away has access electronically to the educational resources of Penn State. On-line learning, as a new means of delivering education to audiences around the world, poses a multitude of questions that haven’t been a concern in the traditional classroom. Making sure students will have a successful learning experience isn’t as simple as before. Faculty are now challenged to find ways to deliver mind-engaging course content to students scattered across the globe. Helping them with this challenge is the Instructional Design and Development (ID&D) unit of the World Campus. Faculty new to the distance learning arena have a team of skilled instructional designers and technology experts available to assist them in developing courses for delivery through the World Campus. Together, faculty and team members collaborate to match their teaching objectives with the students’ learning needs. Dr. Kyle Peck, associate professor of instructional systems in the College of Education and a World Campus instructor, has worked with ID&D to create his World Campus courses for elementary and secondary school technology coordinators. He said, “While this high level of support for course development is common in corporate and other professional training, it is very unusual for an institution of higher education to provide such high-quality instructional design, instruction and support.” When instructional designers and faculty begin working with World Campus courses, they are confronted with the challenge of developing courseware, adding interactivity and security and literally putting the content in motion, but with a timeframe of only a few months. The partnership that is formed between faculty and instructional design teams enables team members to surmount obstacles and get the on-line courses ready for next semester’s students. Faculty designing courses for the World Campus work with an ID&D team that includes a lead instructional designer, graphic artist, editor, technical typist and programmer. Together, the team works under strict deadlines, setting up on-line courses with e-mail, computer software and collaborative learning resources and translating classroom notes into files that can be downloaded or read on-line. One of the six initial faculty chosen to develop courses for the World Campus was Dr. Courtney Burroughs, associate professor of acoustics in the College of Engineering, who worked with instructional designer Bill Rose. Burroughs admits, “I’m not a computer person, and I had to learn a lot about distance education and how it works. But I worked with an excellent team whose members were full of imagination and creativity. They helped me learn more about the technology.” “After overcoming his hesitations with the computers, I could see Courtney was becoming really excited about the possibilities of creating innovative course materials and interacting with students,” Rose said. “That’s what education is all about.” “Sometimes we’re seen as mainly just dealing with the technical side of things,” Rose added. “But that is only part of what we do. We will walk the instructor through a systematic process of distance education course design. A lot of professors I work with already have a good intuitive feel for teaching, but they still need our help to design the course. Then, as they begin teaching at a distance, they become savvy with the technology and understand how to use it for themselves and for their students’ advantage.” While the exploration of new technology in university teaching may have some faculty eager to learn about it, there are others who might be wary of the new ways of producing the course materials. However, David DiBiase, senior lecturer in the Department of Geography in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, uses the new technology for classes at University Park, as well. “When you’re teaching on-line, you can’t rely on improvisation as if you’re in front of a classroom. There is no room for sloppiness; nothing can be taken for granted, everything must be thought through,” DiBiase said. “Your learning objectives must be more explicitly defined. There is indeed an impact that teaching World Campus classes has had on my regular classes. There is a great deal of synergy created and sharing of ideas between my World Campus students, who are usually my adult professional contemporaries, and myself, which carries through into the regular classroom.” Burroughs said, “We need to know how to reach out to students lost to our conventional means, those who have full-time jobs. Working with the instructional design team taught me about collaborative learning strategies. This was not a single-person effort. You definitely need a team, because you can’t do this alone.” “This is a very collaborative learning environment that can be quite different for faculty who are used to being in charge of their classrooms,” Dr. Larry Ragan, director of Instructional Design and Development for Distance Education/World Campus, said. “The on-line environment requires adjustments to what faculty know about the teaching and learning process. The exciting thing for us is that the vast majority of faculty welcome and are stimulated by the challenge.” After working with an ID&D team for his own World Campus courses, Peck said, “Although I’m not a stranger to working in a team environment for other important purposes, I’m usually working as an individual to develop my face-to-face classes. It was great working with the World Campus team. Of course there are challenges to working with any group of people, but together we produced something far better than what I could have produced on my own.” Ann Luck, instructional designer for Peck’s on-line course and several others, said that working with faculty “is really a lot of fun, and I enjoy it. One of my biggest challenges is getting them used to working in a team. I often have to explain what the role of an instructional designer is and why they need one.” Faculty will need the instructional designer for assistance with course design and development—not just the technical aspects, but also in determining effective learning, assessment and interaction strategies for distance education. After making the transition from working alone to working with an ID&D team, faculty offer glowing reviews. Dr. Nickie Askov, professor of education and head of the Department of Adult Education, Instructional Systems and Workforce Education and Development, is teaching her first World Campus course, Adult Education 507. Since fall 1999, Askov has been working with Luck. “I’m very pleased,” Askov said. “Ann and her team are excellent, prompt and very creative. I have been excited and nervous to begin teaching my first World Campus course, and my team has helped me at every step.” Askov’s department is the first to launch a Penn State master’s degree program on-line (please see Master’s). Instructional designer Tom Iwinski said when he works with faculty to create their on-line courses, one of the biggest challenges is often finding time in a faculty member’s busy schedule. “In addition to faculty members’ regular workload, we have to find different ways to get the team together. We have to be really flexible, because faculty are already dealing with plenty of other responsibilities,” Iwinski said. “Teaching in the World Campus environment and working with the designers has been a great experience,” Dr. Paul Heller, professor of entomology, said. “Our course designer, Christa Peck, was very accommodating, visionary and hands-on; ready to provide advice and counsel. I can’t speak highly enough about her work.” From teaching his World Campus courses, Heller also is taking what he has learned into his University Park classroom and Cooperative Extension programs. “I hope to apply the information technology skills I’ve learned through World Campus designers. I want a hands-on experience in the classroom and at the World Campus. It takes a little more time to be ready for the World Campus classes, but the results are extraordinary,” Heller said. | ||||||||||||||||
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Keys to developing World Campus courses To develop a World Campus course, Dr. Larry Ragan, director of Instructional Design and Development for Distance Education/World Campus, said there are a series of questions that the faculty member and design team must work through in order to create a dynamic on-line learning environment. In a traditional classroom, faculty can answer these questions easily using the basics of books and blackboards. However, with on-line learning the faculty member and the instructional designer work together taking into account every possible detail. Examples of questions the faculty member and instructional design team need to address include:
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