This new course was developed to improve the skills and knowledge in online teaching for our faculty partners across the institution. This course results in learners to reach higher levels of success in our online courses offered through better online teaching pedagogy and design.

Previous to the new course, the process for training faculty in Canvas involved a long workbook and an exam in a test Canvas shell where instructors created items such as a discussion, assignment, and module with added resources. This allowed instructors to familiarize themselves with the LMS features they would potentially be using. However, the process in which they sought answers from the lengthy workbook and the need to create a new exam shell for each faculty member became tedious in workflow to manage and monotonous for the instructor learners. While faculty were able to use essential features of the LMS, this process limited the scope for how faculty should being using the LMS in best online teaching practices and course design.

To reach all faculty, especially adjunct instructors, the new course is rooted in pedagogy and course design. Each module is dedicated to an important topic in online teaching and learning: engagement, collaboration, assessment, accessibility, interaction, data and analytics, and feedback. While the roots of the course are grounded in online learning, enrolling faculty in the course as a student allows them to experience what their students might in an online environment. 

For the course to meet the overall goal of increasing student success rates and training faculty, we had to develop measurable learning outcomes for the course. These were developed as a team and curated to fit the needs of our instructors and the goal of our project. For example, the first learning outcome informs instructor-learners of the how the course will promote engagement:

CLO 1 - Implement evidence-based teaching practices that promote student engagement and academic excellence 

These outcomes guide how each module was developed and aligned to their own module level outcomes, assessments, and content. 

For this course to be successful, we had to maintain awareness the we were seeking to build knowledge and skills in our instructor-learners. We also recognized that our instructors would come to the course having a variety of levels in teaching experience and knowledge in which we would need to expound on those that were more senior leaders in the community and support and elevate those new to teaching online. To assist in gauging their experience and offering an opportunity for self-evaluation, we used (with permission) Penn State's Faculty Assessment: Preparing for Online Teaching. This assessment provides a baseline with extensive feedback in three categories: technical, administrative, and pedagogical competencies. 

The learners are welcome into the course by viewing a home page with linked items for quick navigation, such as modules and a general Q&A discussion board. The course modules were decidedly based on topics necessary to complete the course in full: engagement, collaboration, assessment, accessibility, interaction, data and analytics, and feedback. Within each module, there are pages, activities, assignments, and assessments that monitor the instructor-learner progress throughout the course. Each module was mindfully developed so that the instructional designers were applying the same principles in best practices of online teaching.

My own assigned topics, engagement and interaction in online learning, were designed as two unique modules. These modules, set at the beginning of the course, were grounded in interaction, research, and application. For example, the module, Engaging Learners in an Online Environment, seeks to elicit immediate interaction by asking isntructor-learners to share a strategy or insight they have already used in their own courses to garner engagement from students. The users share these items on a Padlet board embedded on a Canvas page. Following this activity, learners are presented with a scenario to ground their own experiences with a lack of engagement in an online setting. The module progresses to the knowledge portion, where learners engage with a framework on how to classify engagement in their course. After reviewing a micro-lecture video (which can be viewed on the right) and a few learning assets, learners complete activities to align the content to the application in online learning using Materia and Canvas native tools.

To assess learners, the module ends with the option of two assessment choices: 

1. Creating an engaging activity using the engagement framework presented in the module 

2. Analyze an activity for engagement using the framework. This allows learners choice in how they want to apply their learning for this topic.