3:00 - 4:00
Lightning Talk Session 10
Course Design
Course Design
Empowering Faculty and Student Voices in Course Design
Click here for Zoom recording of this session! [passcode: r#D^e*7R]
Moderator: Thomas Kling, Bridgewater University
Jacqueliyn Kelly, University of Phoenix
Tomáš Oberding, University of Phoenix
Dianna Gielstra, University of Phoenix
Impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent events have created challenges for faculty in the classroom that might contribute to a sense of disconnection or dissatisfaction both with administration and the institution. Such negative perceptions might lead to burnout, impact the student experience, and faculty attrition. These impacts have been experienced by entire faculty populations who have been the support system of students during this disruptive period. In a large, online undergraduate environmental science program with, a faculty feedback cycle was created to incorporate a series of communication tools deployed at strategic periods before and after courses. Ninety faculty teaching 22 courses, serving over 12,000 students annually, were included in the intervention. These tools provided insight in class facilitation and invited feedback for course improvement. The tools included: invitations to choose a suite of course choices that would make the faculty most comfortable to teach, welcome messages to faculty at the class start emails that incorporated, course update videos aligned to university initiatives, reflections on course feedback, and follow up emails checking in with the faculty to provide insight into their affective responses about a course. The aim of these communication strategies empower faculty to have a voice in revisioning the program by inviting feedback in curriculum development, course design, and course satisfaction. A stronger collaboration between administration and faculty builds community within programs, creates potential interactions to share gratitude, and offers a better support system and ownership of the class for faculty.
Raffi Manjikian, Hudson County Community College
As the world advances after the COVID-19 pandemic, technology and education are at the forefront of the global discussion. New methods of teaching emerged during the pandemic to respond to the landscape, and since then, educators continue to strive for greater creativity and methods for delivering content to their students. As a result, new course modalities have also developed. These new methods of teaching deserve acknowledgment on a larger platform, as educators should be aware of how to utilize them.
Hyflex teaching is one of these new methods of teaching. Hyflex provides many different avenues to teaching; depending on the parameters of the course, it can innovatively present new ways to instruct a course. The concept of hyflex teaching has led to the development of varying modalities of the same course. At Hudson County Community College (HCCC), we utilize technology to pioneer the delivery of our courses. Every day, we strive for our students’ academic success, and with the help of Information Technology Services as well as the Center of Online Learning, we have developed many different ways of teaching the courses that we offer. Our students may choose from an array of options using technology in face-to-face settings, online synchronous courses, and fully online asynchronous courses. Over time, this has led to our institution offering courses in six different modalities. Each modality caters to a student’s preferred method of learning. In this presentation, information about the implementation of each modality will be provided and observed benefits to student success will be discussed.