CHAPTER SIX

TEACHING COURSES DEVELOPED BY OTHERS

Increasingly, online distance learning instructors are being asked to deliver a course they did not develop or design. There are several reasons for this trend, but the main one is that institutions are discovering that creating an effective online course requires more than just transferring classroom materials online. Creating high-quality online courses that promote the achievement of learning outcomes is time-consuming and expensive. In addition, larger institutions find that having courses developed individually each term is not a sustainable model as enrollments increase. Some institutions are offering training and incentives for instructors to develop courses. However, once the course is developed, the instructor who designed it may not be the one to teach it.

Instructors are teaching courses designed by others for a number of reasons:

• An instructor may be asked to develop a course for online use and then leave the institution. Another instructor may then be asked to take over the course and teach it as it has been created.
• Institutions are hiring instructors as content experts specifically to design—but not deliver—online courses. This may be done to create a uniform look and feel to all courses that the institution delivers or to save money on costly course development time.
• Institutions are purchasing or licensing courses from another organization whose business it is to develop courses for online use.
• Instructors are opting to use digital textbooks, which provide text material, exercises, quizzes, a grade book, and the ability to hold discussions on a website that belongs to the publisher.
• Some institutions are contracting with organizations that specialize in what are termed total solutions: instructors submit material to the company to be converted into an online course. The course is then installed on that company's server, and other instructors from the academic institution can use it as well.
• There may be a need to offer multiple sections of the same course. In order to create consistency across courses and work toward the same learning outcomes, the same course design and materials need to be used.

Regardless of how the course is created, many instructors now find themselves being asked to deliver such a course to students, and, in fact, many of the larger online institutions are hiring instructors to do just that. The issues that emerge for these instructors include how to build community into the process, as well as how to add material that they deem to be important and work with material they consider unimportant.

An additional development has been the use of rolling enrollment in some institutions. In this model, a course is ongoing for a period of time, generally anywhere from six weeks upward. However, enrollments occur monthly. Consequently, one student may have been in the course for thirty days when more students are added. This model creates additional challenges for creating community and the efficient delivery of material.

In this chapter, we explore these issues and make concrete suggestions about how instructors might work with and personalize the material, as well as how to create community and foster collaboration. In addition, we consider ways to evaluate good course material and packages. Ideally, in such situations, instructors should be able to

• Use or emphasize the material they feel is most important
• Omit or deemphasize material they feel is unnecessary
• Include collaborative activities
• Promote interactivity and community building

A Focus on Content

Often when an online class is developed by an instructor who will not be teaching the course, the focus is on content rather than pedagogical process. We have made the case that teaching online requires another form of pedagogy, one that is more focused on the facilitation of a collaborative process than on the delivery of content. Thus, simply hiring a content expert to develop a course will not address the issues involved with online teaching. Pairing the content expert with an instructional designer who understands online teaching and can assist in the course development process by asking questions that are central to good course design can help to alleviate the problem. An instructional designer might move the subject expert away from a focus on content by asking how to achieve learning outcomes for the course. In other words, what exercises, readings, case studies, and so on would be useful to students in gaining an understanding of the material being studied? A content expert who can be coached to focus on ways to apply the material online is more likely to develop a course that can be transferred to another instructor.

Because many instructors do not receive training in online teaching, they might not create an online course with that form of pedagogy in mind. Furthermore, the receiving instructor is frequently not privy to the thought process and logic of the person who developed the course. In addition, the receiving instructor may not know how to deliver a course using methods appropriate to online teaching. Because the receiving instructor may not have online facilitation skills either, the importance of good training once again becomes an issue.

One of our former supervisors once remarked that a good instructor can teach almost anything if he or she has good preparation. Thus, a receiving instructor who is practiced in delivering an online course can make it work.

A course can be beautifully constructed, but if the instructor does not teach using techniques appropriate to the online classroom, the course experience will not be a good one for the instructor or the students. Instructors can be given all the resources they need to teach the course, but a successful outcome comes down to their pedagogical approach.

One of us was asked to teach a course on cultural competence written by a subject matter expert with the assistance of an instructional designer. The course contained a debate activity that spanned three weeks of the twelve-week term. Instead of designing the activity so that it occurred on the discussion board, the design team suggested that students be paired up and post their responses to the debate in the assignment drop box and then “publish” the assignment so that the whole class could see it. They were then to rebut the argument of their partner in the same way the following week. In the third week, they were to choose the argument of one other class member and rebut that argument. The approach led to chaos, where students were confused not only by the posting and publishing process but by the whole process of the debate. Consequently, in the middle of this process, the assignment was moved to the discussion board, where the pairs had their own discussion thread to use with an additional area for the third phase of the debate. A suggestion was made to completely rewrite the activity for following terms and was accepted because what had seemed like a good idea in concept didn't work in online teaching practice.

Ability to Adjust the Course

The initial reaction of an instructor who is being asked to teach a class he or she did not create is often, “How much can I customize it?” Consequently the most critical issue in the use of a course created by another instructor is the ability to adjust it. The central issue in customizing an online course is knowing what is involved with its successful facilitation and what elements should be considered when revising and adapting it. Adjustment may take the form of adding discussion forums for the purpose of building community. The receiving instructor may decide that some material included when the course was developed is unnecessary or that some of the discussion questions in the course don't adequately address concepts, or he or she may choose to add more collaborative activities or change the suggested assignments for the course.

We recently talked to an instructor who teaches science and whose institution had purchased an online science course that he was asked to teach. His first reaction to the course was dismay that there were no labs; the first adjustment he made was to add labs by asking students to conduct simple lab projects at home and report the results, make arrangements to visit the science labs at a local university to conduct some of their work, or come to campus to complete lab assignments. The lab work he assigned was simple enough that students could complete it on their own, but it added a practical element to the class that assisted with the achievement of learning outcomes.

The need for adjustment may not be initially apparent to the receiving instructor. Therefore, the ability to make adjustments as the course progresses is also critical to successful delivery. An important consideration, then, is the flexibility of the course management system. Does it allow the insertion of topics not originally included in the course? Can topics easily be deleted? Can the discussion board be modified in any way? The instructors who are teaching the course must also have enough knowledge of the system to be able to make these changes should they so desire or have support staff available who can assist with this. This type of flexibility, accompanied by an understanding of the course management system, allows instructors to adapt the course in whatever way they see fit and makes the use of another instructor's course more manageable.

Examples of Customization

One of us was asked to teach a course created by another instructor when that instructor left the institution two weeks before the start of the term. Students were already enrolled, had received copies of the syllabus, and had bought the books. The course site had not yet been established, however, which meant we could do a significant degree of customization for delivering the material. The possibility of adding reading material in the form of journal articles and book chapters also existed. However, the department chair asked that all else remain the same if at all possible, including the topics to be discussed.

At first, the task appeared relatively easy because delivery could be altered to fit the instructor's usual teaching style. However, after reviewing the assigned readings, course assignments, and topics for discussion, the instructor found the course to be somewhat confusing and found that it did not cover many topics that she would have included had she created it. The task therefore became how to include relevant readings and topics without confusing students in the process.

The course design as it was originally configured also proved confusing for the students. They were asked to work collaboratively with a case study every week and respond to a set of discussion questions. Having two types of collaborative assignments weekly was burdensome, and the students kept asking which set of questions they should focus on (the ones included in the case study or the separate discussion questions based on the readings) because the questions focused on related issues and appeared to be closely intertwined. Around the third week of the course, students asked that the course design be reconsidered. This request from the students actually came as a relief to the instructor. It then became necessary to renegotiate the way in which students were proceeding, and the final decision was that they would prepare and respond only to case studies that they themselves developed, each of them taking a turn with presenting the case. Once that adjustment was made, the course proceeded smoothly.

Although working with a course that someone else has created offers challenges, if it is constructed with customization in mind and the training is provided to the instructor, the challenge is lessened and the instructor can focus on delivering a course more in line with his or her own style of teaching.

When Customizing Is Not Possible

What happens, however, when an instructor is unable to customize a course to any significant degree? Many times an institution will ask an instructor to teach the course as is, at least the first time it is offered—and sometimes every time it is offered. This request raises some important questions: Is this a violation of the instructor's academic freedom? How often does a department chair ask an instructor teaching face-to-face to teach a class in exactly the same way someone else taught it? Most faculty view as objectionable a directive to make no changes in a course. Nevertheless, this request is frequently made when instructors are asked to teach online. In fact, uniformity in course design and delivery is an element that accreditors look for when evaluating a new online program. There is logic behind this: students feel more comfortable and can more easily move from course to course in an online program when courses have the same look and feel. In addition, they have a better idea of what to expect in terms of weekly workload and assignment completion. The hope, of course, is that instructors will be asked to teach well-designed courses that need little modification. When that is not the case, colleges and universities often provide a means by which instructors can make requests to implement minor changes in the course as it is being delivered and even in future offerings of the course.

In fact, some instructors entering online teaching for the first time can be relieved to receive a course that is already developed. Even when they are given permission to customize, some teach the course without any revisions at least the first time. As their level of comfort with online teaching increases, they are more likely to seek modifications to the courses they teach.

When customizing a course is not possible, the instructor may still be able to extend the use of discussion boards or make good use of multimedia or Web 2.0 applications to supplement the material in the course. Both can help point students to material that was not included initially or suggest they pay minimal attention to material that the instructor feels is irrelevant. Good use of outside resources should help lessen the confusion while moving students in a direction that is more in line with the instructor's orientation. A university for which one of us teaches encourages such practice on a weekly basis. The instructors are encouraged to seek out material beyond that included in the course, such as YouTube videos, websites, and additional articles, and to present those to students weekly along with their own interpretation of the week's material, which can be done in text, audio, or video. Students often express appreciation for this practice because they can see and hear the expertise of the instructor, and instructors appreciate the ability to demonstrate their content expertise in this way.

Through course discussion and by asking probing questions, the instructor should be able to empower students to seek additional resources and share what they find with their peers. The instructor may choose to give a research assignment to the entire group, asking each member to focus on a particular area or topic in the course and then report to one another. Another technique is to divide the topics included in the course and ask small groups of students to seek resources on a topic and then report back. Assignments like these help students develop their research skills, improve their ability to find additional reference material, and build collaboration into a course where none was present previously. Instructors who make creative use of technology resources that the institution might not provide can successfully deliver a course that at first glance appeared to have little room for customization.

Building Community into the Process

A more critical factor in teaching a course that another instructor has created is finding ways to build community during the process of delivering the course. Because most courses developed by another instructor or entity focus on content rather than process, the development of a learning community is often neglected. Yet it is a key component in the successful achievement of learning outcomes. How, then, can an instructor build a learning community into a course that lacks it?

Regardless of the content and schedule of the course, the instructor can still use the first week to focus on community building. He or she can encourage students to begin communicating with one another on a personal level; for example, having students post introductions at the start of the course helps them connect with others in the course. We make it a practice to respond to every student introduction and find something to comment on. For example, we might say something like, “I see you have a dog that you love. I have a dog as well, and she absolutely rules our family!” The instructor may also ask all the students to engage in icebreaker activities even if those activities are not included in the course design. We often create a social space in the course where students can share important news and jokes and support one another as the course progresses. Creating this forum becomes a perfect place to conduct a beginning icebreaker or to use one as the course is in progress to help students continue to connect and to relieve the tension that can occur as the course progresses.

An instructor once contacted us because she had been asked to teach her first online course using a website on which another instructor had placed course content. She had no ability to create a discussion board associated with the course or to customize it in any way. She decided, after talking to us, not only to use Twitter to create discussions but also to create subgroups of students for the purpose of collaboratively working with case study material. Although she found this approach cumbersome and a bit primitive, she was able to create a more collaborative approach to the course and received feedback from students that the outcome was successful. Based on that first experience, she has since requested her institution to allow her to make significant changes in the way in which the course is constructed by using a different course management system so that collaboration and discussion can be built into the course site.

Evaluating a Course Developed by Another

A recent important development is an attempt to create a list of quality benchmarks by which to measure online courses. Toward this end, a number of years ago, the Institute for Higher Education Policy released a list of twenty-four quality assurance benchmarks for online education (Merisotis, 2000). Following this, in 2003, the University of Maryland Online began what is known as the Quality Matters Project, designed to create quality standards for online courses that could be replicated across institutions.

Quality benchmarks become particularly important when deciding whether to adopt a course developed by another entity and also when a course is developed by a subject matter expert in an academic institution and will be delivered by a number of instructors. However, in and of themselves, benchmarks mean nothing; they must be couched within a good planning process for an overall institutional online program. The benchmarks related to online course development and teaching and learning make common sense and reflect the practices we have been promoting. These benchmarks, which Merisotis (2000) put forth, are reiterated by the Quality Matters Program:

• Learning outcomes, not the availability of existing technology, determine the technology being used to deliver course content.
• Instructional materials are reviewed periodically to ensure they meet [institutional] program standards.
• Courses are designed to require students to engage themselves in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation as part of their course and program requirements.
• Student interaction with the instructor and other students is an essential characteristic and is facilitated through a variety of ways, including discussions, activities, or e-mail.
• Feedback to student assignments and questions is constructive and provided in a timely manner.
• Students are instructed in the proper methods of effective research, including assessment of the validity of resources.
• Students are provided with supplemental course information that outlines course objectives, concepts, and ideas, and learning outcomes for each course are summarized in a clearly written, straightforward statement.
• The program's educational effectiveness and teaching-learning process are assessed through an evaluation process that uses several methods and applies specific standards.
• Intended learning outcomes are reviewed regularly to ensure clarity, utility, and appropriateness. (Merisotis, 2000, pp. 2–3)

It is important to note that all of the quality benchmarks related to course development and delivery have little to do with content. Instead, the benchmarks focus on constructing the course in a way that facilitates good delivery—in other words, on the process of online teaching and learning. Consequently, as institutions and instructors evaluate a course, they should be concerned first and foremost with how well the process of the course will assist students in meeting learning objectives. Although both content and process can be customized, if the basic structure of the course allows an interactive, learner-focused delivery process, it will provide a solid foundation on which to customize content. We offer some additional criteria that we use when evaluating the effectiveness of online courses that include content, process, and facilitation:

• Course fits with the curriculum.
• Course is learner focused.
• Course is accessible.
• Relevant content is included.
• Collaborative activities, including case studies, small group work, jigsaw activities, simulations, and rotated facilitation are included to stimulate critical thinking.
• Course is interactive.
• All course elements are in alignment and are cohesive.
• Learning styles and culture are addressed through the use of varied activities and approaches to the topic.
• Clear instructions about course expectations and for assignment completion are included.
• A reasonable workload balances reading, posting, assignment completion, use of e-mail, and the like.
• The technology in use serves learning objectives.
• Course pages are designed with one screen of text and graphics, requiring limited scrolling.
• The use of audio, video, and synchronous media is appropriate.
• The use of introductions, profiles, and bios is included.
• Icebreaker activities are included at the start of the course.
• Experience-based activities and exercises are included.
• A social space is provided in the course or social networking technologies are included.
• Clear guidelines for communication, including netiquette, are included.
• Clear expectations about posting requirements, timelines, and assignments are communicated in the course.
• Open-ended questions are used to stimulate discussion and encourage reflection.
• Assessment and evaluation activities that are in alignment with learning objectives and course content are used. (Palloff & Pratt, 2007, pp. 154–155)

Issues of Intellectual Property

When we were writing the first edition of this book, instructors and their institutions were struggling with issues related to intellectual property in online courses. Intellectual property issues, or the debate about who owns online courses, continues to receive attention as online learning grows. This is particularly so when institutions ask instructors to develop and teach a course online for the first time and then switch the teaching responsibility to another member of the faculty, or when they adopt courses developed by other entities that they then modify, unless clear agreements are in place regarding course ownership.

Intellectual property issues do not belong entirely in the realm of administrators and their lawyers. Instructors also need to be concerned with the ownership of intellectual property and as they create courses for online delivery. Among the important issues to address are these:

• Is an agreement in place between instructor and administrators that spells out who owns courses housed on the university's server?
• If one instructor develops a course that another member of the institution teaches, is there a provision for royalties, or has the developing instructor member been adequately compensated for “work for hire”?
• Do instructors own the courses they develop, and can they use those courses in other ways, such as teaching them at other institutions, placing them on their own private websites, or selling them to a private entity for delivery elsewhere?
• If the institution has an agreement with a course developer and a member of the institution is asked to submit course material to be placed on that company's website, does the instructor still own the course material?
• If the instructor leaves the institution, does the course he or she developed go along, or does it remain on the institution's server and become the property of the institution?

There are still no hard-and-fast answers to any of these questions, which are not applicable to the face-to-face classroom at all. The American Association of University Professors issued a statement regarding distance education and intellectual property in its May-June 1999 issue of Academe. It noted that online education “invariably presents administrative, technical, and legal problems usually not encountered in the traditional classroom setting” (p. 41), which result in difficult issues of ownership of materials designed for distance education. Although written many years ago, this statement holds true today.

A 2005 study (Baron et al., 2005) noted dramatic changes in policies and practices regarding intellectual property as applied to online courses. All of the universities studied by these authors had a published intellectual property rights policy that included the rights of instructors to their work. They noted that although 93 percent of these policies designated that professors should have control of their traditional scholarly works, 71 percent of these universities specifically listed exemptions to this policy. Many claimed these exemptions included scholarly work that was created through the use of substantial university resources. In these circumstances, Baron et al. noted that the universities generally offered royalties to instructors for their use. They noted as well that a substantial majority of universities claim the intellectual property rights for materials that faculty are given specific assignments to produce, are specifically hired to produce, or are commissioned to produce as this is considered work for hire.

In addition to these potentially contentious areas, the study revealed some other areas of growing concern. Although half of the universities gave control of syllabi, tests, and notes to faculty, only 31 percent of these institutions also included materials posted to the course site as part of the delivery of the course. Often one of the ways in which instructors customize a course is to add their own material to it, and with this type of policy, this material would then belong to the university. Another area of concern is that 57 percent of universities make some claims in their policies to work developed within the scope of employment or according to the copyright law for works-for-hire. Under this type of policy, anything the instructor writes or creates could potentially be claimed by the university as its property.

The issue, then, is that instructors need to be aware of and ask the questions presented here as they move forward with course development rather than move blindly into uncharted territory. It is dangerous to assume that intellectual property issues will not apply to the work they are creating or modifying. Consequently, instructors and their institutions need to come to an agreement about how courses and additional materials will be used and, most important, who owns them.

Courses with Rolling Admission

Courses with rolling admissions are relatively new in online learning and can pose some interesting challenges to instructors and students alike. Generally rolling admission courses are prewritten courses that allow students to start at any designated point, often at the start of a month or middle of a month. This means that some students may be finishing their course requirements while others in the same course are just getting started. In such situations, we have been asked how to go about establishing a learning community or facilitating collaborative assignments. Both of us have taught rolling admission courses and offer the following suggestions based on our experience:

• Include an area for introductions or bios to allow newer students to jump in and introduce themselves as well as quickly get to know the others in the course.
• Structure some form of icebreaker activity at the points in the course when new members will be joining the group to assist with the integration of new members. These icebreakers can be part of the content so as to maintain the flow of the course.
• Use students who are further along in the course as buddies or mentors for students who are just beginning.
• Leave discussions from past students up and available for a designated period of time. This gives newer students in the course some perspective about how others have viewed course material. Interestingly, we have had students get very excited about the posts of students who have preceded them and sometimes reach out to those students to extend the discussion beyond the parameters of the course.
• Use smaller groups for collaborative work and shorter time frames for the assignments to ensure that all students who are enrolled in the course at the same time can begin and complete the work together.

Apart from the obvious challenges of integrating new members and facilitating the development of community and the use of collaborative work, time management for both students and the instructor can be an issue. Instructors in this situation can find themselves feeling like perpetual grading machines as they endeavor to stay on top of all assignments that are coming in from both ongoing students and newer members. It is also possible that instructors in this situation will not get breaks very often, which can lead to burnout. If there is an option to skip a month at the start of a course, we advise that instructors take advantage of it periodically. Having a few weeks without students coming and going in a course is important in helping instructors recharge and prepare for future offerings of the course.

Final Thoughts on Teaching a Course Developed by Another

Our discussion of the use of courses developed by another entity or instructor member, along with discussion of rolling admission courses, is not intended to suggest that these practices be inhibited, particularly given how pervasive they have become, but rather that good planning is needed when moving in this direction. Given the amount of time for training, development, and support that is needed to create a new course, the use of predeveloped courses can be cost effective. Building an online course is similar to writing a textbook and developing associated learning materials: it is a process that takes a tremendous amount of time and energy.

When predeveloped courses are well designed and focus on the process of delivering the material rather than the content, they can be a high-quality means of moving into online teaching. As with any other online course, however, the focus must remain on instructor and student training in order to be able to move through the course successfully and give support when problems occur. Purchasing courses does not relieve the institution of its obligation to provide a strong infrastructure for its online program.

• • •

With these thoughts in mind, we now turn our attention to the learners, who should be the central focus of all online efforts. In the next chapter, we explore the roles of learners in the online learning process as well as what learners need in order to become successful online students.