Strategic Budget Initiative (SBI 2006/2007)

Narrative Proposal

Maximizing Quality and Consistency in Alternative Delivery through Faculty Training and Course Development/Review: Implementing the Alternative Delivery Standards Plan

Proposal Focus:

For many years, alternative delivery courses (online, hybrid and telecourses) have developed at Valencia Community College through organic, grass-roots level pioneers who took on the challenge of new teaching methods without formal support, structure or standards. In order to bring our alternative delivery courses and methods to full scale at the college, the formal support, structure and standards are necessary and have been defined in the Alternative Delivery Standards Plan. This proposal is an integral part of implementing this plan which includes standard expectations and best practices as well as a course approval process for moving courses to an online teaching platform and a faculty development and certification component. This plan directly relates to the Strategic Learning Plan including Start Right (2-B), Learning by Design (4-3) and Learning Support Systems (5-E). In order to implement consistent standards as described in the plan, funding is needed for faculty and course development as described in the Alternative Delivery Standards Plan.

The implementation of the faculty certification program and the Alternative Delivery Standards Plan will make excellent use of college resources and allow more faculty to be trained as course facilitators for online classes. In the past, our course development has not been coordinated and we have several versions of many courses. The implementation of this proposal would move forward the idea of using small groups of content experts to develop one common shell for each course. The investment of time and resources into developing pedagogically sound, thorough and rich course shells will allow the college to hire faculty who are trained to facilitate online learning (but not continue to spend resources developing additional shells of the same course). Furthermore, by standardizing the course shells students will benefit by seeing a more consistent interface when interacting with faculty while taking alternative delivery courses in the online course environment.

Prior Success:

The basis of this project is not a formal project but years of interaction between faculty, deans provosts and Teaching/Learning support personnel in creating alternative delivery courses. These interactions and the resulting courses were created without clear guidance on standards and requirements. Although this project is not based on a formal pilot project completed at Valencia, we have carefully studied a number of successful Alternative Delivery programs for standards plans, procedures, course approval and faculty development processes from other colleges and have based our proposal on their work. A full reference list is included in the Alternative Delivery Standards Planats.

Scalable:

This project will have an immediate collegewide impact as all disciplines and departments will have opportunities to propose courses for development and to recommend faculty for training. The collegewide Instructional Affairs Committee, along with the Learning Leadership Team, will recommend courses for development and all faculty in a selected discipline/course will be eligible to apply for funding in course development.

Valencia Community College currently offers 263 sections in an online or telecourse platform. The implementation of this proposal will add 15 additional course shells to our online offerings and will include a review of 15 existing online courses in the 2006-2007 academic year.

Impact on Learning:

This plan provides for a substantial faculty training and thorough peer review process for all newly developed online courses and sets a plan for review of all existing courses. Rubrics and evaluation standards are provided in the Alternative Delivery Standards plan and will be applied in this project. This training and review process will result in better trained faculty teaching courses which meet collegewide standards, ultimately affecting students in all alternative delivery classrooms. Several pieces of data will be evaluated to determine the project’s success and impact on learning. The review will include analyzing data on retention, student success, student assessment of instruction feedback and faculty feedback related to courses developed through the new process. The results of the review will guide future iterations of the Alternative Delivery Standards Plan and the faculty certification program.

Collaboration:

The Alternative Delivery Standards Plan was created by a team of six faculty, two deans, a provost and representatives from Learning Technology and Alternative Delivery. This group conducted extensive research and co-authored the standards plan. The Standards Plan has been shared with the entire college community and feedback, questions and suggestions have been addressed in a number of ways. The plan has been formally presented at Faculty Council, each campus Faculty Senate, College Learning Council, Instructional Affairs Committee, and the Learning Leadership Team. In addition, questions from individual faculty, deans and others have been answered by members of the Alternative Delivery Standards Committee. This extensive collaboration has helped to refine the standards plan and has highlighted the strategic importance of increasing our alternative delivery course offerings.

Planning:

The Alternative Delivery Standards Plan outlines a clear process for new online Course Approval. This process includes prioritization of new courses by the IAC and LLT, solicitation of proposals from faculty who wish to develop selected course shells, training for the faculty member and the creation of a design team to develop the course shell. The implementation of this proposal will follow the outlined process and will result in 15 new course shells as well as 15 existing course reviews.

Impact on Others:

This proposal will heavily impact the staff of Learning Technology and Alternative Delivery. The proposal includes twoats new LTAD staff members to assist with “ramping up” the plan and providing specific support for creating learning objects, orientation materials, streaming videos, etc.

Evaluation strategy:

The effectiveness of the implementation will be assessed in two key ways:  Goal of 15 new course shells and 15 existing course reviews met Focus group of faculty participants to gather qualitative data on the training and development experience

Timeline for implementation and evaluation:

May, 2006 Meet with IAC to identify priorities for new course conversions
Take recommended priorities to LLT for approval

June, 2006 Call for faculty interested in developing selected course shells

July, 2006 Select faculty for development teams, assign design teams

August, 2006 Begin development of new courses with faculty design teams

September 2006 Meet with IAC to identify priorities for existing course review. Take recommended review priorities to LLT for approval

October, 2006 Identify peer review teams, provide training as needed

December, 2006 Complete new course shell development and review

January, 2007 Offer newly developed courses to students.  Begin peer review of existing courses

March, 2007 Conduct focus groups with faculty developers and reviewers to assess process

April, 2007 Review recommendations from peer review teams, assign designers to assist faculty with course improvements

May, 2007 Measure progress against goals for 2006-2007.  Meet with IAC to identify priorities for new course conversions.  Take recommended priorities to LLT for approval

Authors:  Amy Bosley & Angelique Smith,
Valencia Community College

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