Activity

Facilitator(s):
Sara McCool, University of West Florida

Abstract:
The Academic Technology Department at the University of West Florida offered faculty a six week “Designing a Quality Course” online training. ATC reviewed this training using Topkit’s assessment methods: faculty surveys and summative evaluation. ATC identified areas of improvement for the course and the obstacles to making these improvements. Per the priorities of Topkit, our goal was to accommodate faculty and provide a flexible course modality. Through official faculty surveys we learned that faculty would like the course to be self-paced but if the course was not self-paced they were happy with the length of the course, however our own enrollment data showed that faculty would complete the objectives of the course within a few days specifically a weekend when they had time. We wanted to move to a self-paced course but felt our synchronous discussions inside the course were mandatory for creating a learning community. The course was modified to be closer to a self-paced course but not entirely. After our last summative assessments with three instructional designers in ATC we were able to create a redesign that supports a community of practice. This presentation will detail our pedagogical solutions to this problem. Objectives: 1. Define Self-Paced, Competency Based, synchronous and nonsynchronous Education. 2. Identify barriers that self-paced competency education presents to creating a community of learners. 3. Identify modifications that can be made to make training more flexible. 4. Identify solutions to implementing a self-paced training that supports a community of practice.