Nearly 100 members of the Eastern Kentucky University community have completed the EKU Online Course Development and Online Teaching Certificate program. The intensive eight-week program is sponsored by the Instructional Design Center in the Office of eCampus Learning.
Eighteen full-time, part-time and adjunct professors earned certificates in Summer 2016, bringing the total number of program graduates to 91.
The course, designed to help professors transition their in-person teaching skills into the online classroom, covers a number of topics, including the Community of Inquiry (COI) model of learning and Quality Matters (QM) assessment, as well as how to use blogs, wikis and discussion boards more effectively. Participants learn in the same ways their future students will, with online assignments, readings, assessments and discussions. Participants are also required to attend three face-to-face meetings. Faculty/student engagement is strongly emphasized along with other teaching best practices for the online modality.
“It’s so gratifying to see faculty embrace online learning and watch as strong professional relationships are made between faculty and the instructional designers throughout the course,” said Steve Dwinnells, director of the Instructional Design Center.
One of the most important aspects of the entire program is that faculty get to experience an online course as a student, which allows them to understand how self-discipline, self-pacing and time management affect students’ success.
For their final assignment, each participant creates a media project that they can or will use in an upcoming online course. Projects from previous sessions can be viewed on the Instructional Design Center’s website under “Faculty Showcase.”
Many exceptional projects were submitted in Summer 2016. Using a host of technologies, Catherine Beechie with the College of Education developed a video explaining the equal sign and the mathematical concepts behind it. Aileen Jones with the College of Health Sciences created a video to demonstrate how to conduct a psychiatric interview.
Additional graduates from the Summer 2016 session were: Ann Burns, Elizabeth Crane, Stacey Korson and Donna Pitts from the College of Education; Donna Corley, Mary DeLetter; Molly McKinney, Elizabeth Rhodus and Pat Woods from the College of Health Sciences; Barbara Davis and Rebekah Waikel from the College of Science; Jessica Stanfill Hall, Melinda Murphy and Mary Tortorici and with the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences; and Wanju Huang and Christy Templeton from the College of Justice and Safety.
The course dates and application can be found on the IDC website. Dates are also announced in EKU Today. The next session begins Sept. 12.