APPENDIX A

SAMPLE TRAINING FOR FACULTY

There are two sample trainings presented in this appendix. The first is a basic training syllabus that we have used for online delivery of new faculty training and that we initially presented in The Excellent Online Instructor (2011). We have modified it to include concepts discussed in this book, and it can be further modified in terms of length of time required for training. Topics can also be added or deleted. As presented, this represents a four-week training. Immediately following is a more intensive training focusing on community building in online courses. Appendix B lists resources and websites that can be used to supplement a faculty training course.

Introduction to and Best Practices in Online Teaching

This course is designed as a four-week online orientation to online teaching. It will focus on developing a shared vocabulary of technical language and will discuss the pedagogical concerns in delivery of quality online education. In addition, focus will be on creating online courses that lead to desired learning outcomes by effectively blending course content with appropriate use of technological tools.

Required Reading

Recommended Reading

Prerequisites

• No prior course work in online teaching and learning is required.
• Basic computer and word processing skills, such as copy and paste.
• Basic understanding of the use of e-mail and the ability to access the course site and other sites on the Internet.

Recommended

• Access to a smart phone or tablet computer
• Review of course texts recommended prior to beginning the course

Learning Outcomes

• Experience an online course from the perspective of the learner.
• Explore and integrate various online teaching and learning strategies.
• Explore and integrate the concept of learning communities in online teaching.
• Explore and integrate mobile learning into a course.
• Begin planning for the development of your own online course.
• Apply the concepts of good course development to a course that can be immediately implemented and delivered.
• Be able to critique the positive elements in courses developed by others as well as make appropriate suggestions for improvement.
• Integrate good assessment techniques into an online course.

LEARNING UNITS

Week 1

Unit 1: Intros, Learning Objectives, Guidelines (3 Days)

Unit Overview

This unit is designed to help us get to know one another and to discuss how we will work together online. It will help you become more familiar with your course management system as we navigate it together, post introductions, review learning objectives for the course, and discuss guidelines for participation. The following are a few guidelines for participation in this course:

• Given the short duration of the course (four weeks), you are expected to log on almost daily.
• You are expected to post to the discussion at least once per unit and in response to one of your colleagues at least once.
• All assignments should be completed on time so as not to hold up progress in the course.
• All communication will be professional and will observe the rules of netiquette. For more information about netiquette, visit www.albion.com/netiquette.

Unit Objectives

• Meet one another.
• Develop a contract for learning during this course.

Assignments

• Post an introduction to the discussion board in the appropriate discussion forum. Include not only information about your background but also your experience with online teaching and learning. Reflect on the following questions in your introduction: What drew you to teach online? How do you see yourself as an instructor? What are your hopes and fears about beginning your online teaching experience? Feel free to record a brief video introduction using your phone, tablet, or computer and upload it to the course site. You can also visit Glogster (www.glogster.com) and create an online poster as your introduction. If you choose to do this, provide us the link to your poster so that we can view it.
• Respond to at least one other person's introduction.
• Post a message to the discussion board indicating your willingness to work within the guidelines listed in the overview for this unit. Are there any guidelines that should be added? Any guidelines you might have difficulty meeting?

Unit 2: Syllabus Development in Online Learning (3 Days)

Unit Overview

The syllabus forms the backbone of any course and, in the online course, is critically important, as it is the main way that students gain understanding of what is expected of them in the online classroom. Consequently, very little can be left to assumption in the syllabus for the online course. As online instructors develop syllabi, there is a need to leave behind what has been done in the face-to-face classroom and to rethink the course for online delivery. There are several questions to ask in order to do so:

• Who are my students?
• What do I want to accomplish through this course? What do I want my students to know, feel, or do as a result of this course? What course content will support these objectives?
• What guidelines, rules, roles, and rituals need to be established for this course?
• How do I plan to deliver course material?
• How comfortable do I feel including collaborative activity, personal interaction, promoting knowledge acquisition by learners, and releasing control of the learning process?
• How do I want to organize my course site?
• How will I assess student performance?
• How will I address attendance requirements?
• What do I want to see students walk away with when they conclude this class?

In addition to answering these questions, online instructors need to consider new and different activities to access course content. Read-and-discuss online courses are not engaging and may lead to poor participation down the line. Consequently, thinking creatively is strongly encouraged!

Unit Objectives

• Develop a stronger understanding of the nature of online learning.
• Consider and experiment with new ways to deliver course material.

Assignment

• Review the textbooks for this course and then post answers to the following discussion questions in the appropriate forum on the discussion board: What ideas do you have for presenting course mate-rial? What activities might you try? What concerns do you have about the questions to consider listed in the unit overview and how might you address them?

Week 2

Unit 3: Choosing Appropriate Learning Activities (3 Days)

Unit Overview

Now that you are more familiar with your course management system, the purpose of this unit is to help you choose and more fully develop activities for your class. Chapters 2 and 7 in Lessons from the Virtual Classroom (Palloff & Pratt, 2013) discuss best practices in online learning, including understanding who your students are and how they learn, as well as what they need to support them in their learning. Collaborating Online (Palloff & Pratt, 2005) offers a number of suggestions for engaging online learners in collaborative activities. In addition, visit YouTube and view a video or two on the use of Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis and blogs, to promote collaboration. With these as a guide, revisit your prospective learning activities and more fully develop them for implementation in your own course.

Unit Objectives

• More fully develop a set of learning activities for implementation in an online course.
• Explore the concept of engagement and how to integrate that into a course.

Assignments

• Review chapters 2 and 7 in Lessons from the Virtual Classroom and the entire book, Collaborating Online. Given these materials as a backdrop, how can you more fully develop the activities you suggested in unit 2? What makes these activities effective, and how will they tie into your learning objectives for your course? Which tools will you use to deliver these activities and why?
• You will be paired with a partner to provide feedback to one another on your activities. Post your answers to these questions in the appropriate discussion forum on the discussion board and then provide feedback to your partner.
• How do you view the concept of engagement? How will you ensure that your students are fully engaged in your course? Please post your answers to the appropriate discussion forum and respond to at least one other colleague.

Unit 4: Promoting Participation (3 Days)

Unit Overview

Effective delivery of an online course demands high participation on the part of students and instructors. You have been developing ideas for your course, but if you cannot get students to participate, your efforts have been for naught. The following suggestions will help maximize participation (Palloff & Pratt, 2007):

• Be clear about how much time the course will require of students and faculty in order to eliminate potential misunderstandings about course demands. Include this information in your syllabus.
• Teach students about online learning. Include a “frequently asked questions” area of your course, as well as a place where students can ask you questions as they arise.
• As the instructor, be a good model of participation by logging on frequently and contributing to discussions. Plan to participate as often as you ask your students to participate.
• Be willing to step in and set limits if participation wanes or if the conversation is headed in the wrong direction.
• Remember that there are people attached to the words on the screen. Be willing to contact students who are not participating and invite them in.
• Create a warm and inviting atmosphere that promotes the development of a sense of community among the participants.

Keeping these points in mind can help to maximize participation and create a satisfactory learning experience for both students and faculty.

Unit Objectives

• Develop strategies to effectively engage students in an online course.
• Establish and implement practices that maximize student participation online.

Assignments

• Review the sample participation guidelines presented in exhibit 5.3 in Lessons from the Virtual Classroom. Present the guidelines you intend to use in your online course in the appropriate forum on the discussion board and provide feedback to at least one other colleague on his or her set of guidelines.
• After completing your guidelines, write a welcome letter to your students and post it on the discussion board. Provide feedback to at least one other colleague on his or her letter.

Week 3

Unit 5: Collaboration and Reflection (3 Days)

Unit Overview

In the online environment, collaboration is the cornerstone of the educational experience. It forms the foundation of a learning community while bringing students together to support learning and promoting creativity and critical thinking. In addition, collaboration creates an environment of reflection: as students engage in collaborative work, they are required to reflect on the process as well as the content being explored. The result is a transformative learning experience: the student no longer views the content in the same way. Social interaction, rather than individual exploration, expands students' views of the topic and what they thought they knew. It allows them to question previously held beliefs and explore new ones. In addition, the use of collaborative activity in a class helps to address issues of learning style and culture, allowing students to work from their areas of strength. Collaboration helps students to become more than just students: they become reflective practitioners. It is important to remember, however, that collaboration does not just happen. The instructor plays a critical role in preparing students for collaborative work. The stages for collaboration are as follows:

• Set the stage.
• Create the environment.
• Model the process.
• Evaluate the process.

Think about the collaborative activity you may be planning for your online course with these phases in mind. How might you facilitate the collaborative process?

Unit Objectives

• Plan for collaborative work in an online course.
• Create activities that promote reflection and transformative learning.

Assignments

• Review once more the activities that you are proposing for your online course, and answer the following question in the appropriate forum on the discussion board: What might you do to incorporate collaborative work in your online course? If you have already planned a collaborative activity, how do you plan to get students ready for it? How might you need to prepare them? Post your plan, and provide feedback to at least one other plan.
• Answer the following question on the discussion board: How will you promote reflection in your course? Will this be a graded activity?

Unit 6: Incorporating Evaluation (3 Days)

Unit Overview

Assessment of student performance is a critical component of any class, face-to-face or online. As we learned from our reading, good assessment aligns with teaching activities and is not seen as an added burden by either the student or the instructor. Angelo and Cross (1993) note that good assessment has these characteristics:

• Learner centered
• Teacher directed
• Mutually beneficial
• Formative
• Context specific
• Ongoing

In this unit, we will spend more time thinking about critical assessment and evaluation activities in your online course.

Unit Objectives

• Develop appropriate assessment activities for the online course.
• Prepare and present a grading rubric for assessments.

Assignments

• Review the assessment activities presented in Collaborating Online. Post the following to the appropriate forum on the discussion board: What assessment activities are you preparing for your online course? Discuss how they align with course objectives and learning activities. Give at least one colleague feedback on his or her proposed assessments.
• Prepare and post to the discussion board at least one draft grading rubric for one of the learning activities in your course. Provide feedback to at least one colleague on his or her rubric.

Week 4

Unit 7: Prepare a Lesson (4 Days)

Unit Overview

You are now ready to begin creating your course. During the next few days, you will be expected to pull one learning unit together in draft form and present it for review.

Unit Objectives

• Complete a draft of one learning unit of your course, including all learning and assessment activities.
• Give and receive critical feedback for lesson improvement.

Assignment

• Present the draft lesson with activities and assessments and/or rubrics to the partner you worked with in unit 3. Provide a critique of the lesson your colleague posted, and respond to the critique your partner provides about your lesson.

Unit 8: Final Reflections on the Learning Experience (2 Days)

Unit Overview

Congratulations! You made it through this very intensive training experience! Now that you have, it's time to take a deep breath and reflect a bit on what you've learned over the last four weeks. Think about how you will approach your online course and your students and what you might yet need to help you with your development as an online instructor.

Unit Objectives

• Critically reflect on the training experience.
• Define areas that need further work and final questions.

Assignment

• Respond to the following questions in the appropriate forum on the discussion board: What new learning have I gained from participating in this training? How might I do things differently in my online class than I might have without the training? What unanswered questions do I still have?

Intensive Training Focused on Collaboration and Building Online Learning Communities

This syllabus is for intensive training focused on creating collaboration and building learning communities. It can be used with instructors of any experience level from novice to master faculty and can be delivered in a time frame as short as one week, although ideally, two weeks would work well for this training.

• • •

Hello and welcome to your Building Online Learning Communities course!

Here are a few guidelines to help you get going in this brief, intensive experience. First, although we're studying online learning communities this week, please don't expect that you will form a solid community in such a short time. We've certainly seen the start of good communities in a week, but it's just the beginning of a much longer process. You will be engaged in a collaborative activity with your small group to facilitate this process. Because of this, you need to make a commitment to participate over the next five days. Please don't let your emerging community down! Make sure to set aside adequate time daily to work on this course. We hope that through your networking with one another, community can flourish as you move forward beyond this course!

The group is divided into smaller working groups. Your task within each group is to participate in a collaborative project that results in some form of a group paper or presentation that explores or demonstrates ways to build community in an online class. You can choose to submit your project in the form of a wiki, a paper that has been completed jigsaw style (meaning that each member of the group contributes a piece), a Prezi (www.prezi.com) or PowerPoint presentation, or a Glogster (www.glogster.com) poster (Glogster is a graphic blogging application). Each group will negotiate roles for the completion of the activity. We want you to share these roles:

• Daily observer: Each of you should take a turn in sharing your obser-vations. There should be at least five of you in the group, and you can choose the day to observe that is most convenient for you. Your observations of each day's work will be posted in the Report Out area of the discussion board.
• Project leader: Appoint one person whose job will be to coordinate the group's work on the final project.
• Seeker: More than one person can fill this role. Seekers find material for the group to use as you all work on the project.
• Weaver: There can be more than one weaver, but we suggest no more than two people filling this role. The weaver(s) will edit and smooth out the final work to ensure that it is well presented and coherent.

Although we will be observing your daily discussions and project work, we will not be participating in the small groups unless you invite us in for some reason, for example, if you have specific questions from your small group or there are participation issues. The daily observer should be the person who contacts us and asks us to participate. Instead of participating in your groups, we have an area on the discussion board entitled Questions for Drs P&P. Please interact with us in that area and ask questions about our ideas, the book, issues emerging from your own discussions, and so forth. Please go beyond asking us questions about what's due when. This is our area to interact with you around the ideas presented, and we welcome that discussion!

To begin, log in and post an introduction in the Introduce Yourself area so you can begin to know one another. To be successful, please plan to log in daily and participate actively in the daily discussions and project work. Here are the additional requirements you need to fulfill in order to get credit for the course:

• Write a final reflective paper about the process and the project for the week. There is no required length or format. Just give us your reflections as they relate to the reading, discussion, and collaborative work!
• One week after the course ends, e-mail your paper to Rena and Keith at [email protected] and [email protected].

Please ask questions as you go. We look forward to working with you all!

Warmly,

Rena and Keith

Day 1: Defining and Recontextualizing Community

Welcome to our online course on Building Online Learning Communities! We look forward to working with you this week as we explore the importance of interactivity and community building in online classes. This course involves reading chapters from our book, Building Online Learning Communities, listening to brief audio pieces related to the topic of the day if you so choose, discussing the concepts and issues in the discussion area of the course, and, most important, working on a collaborative activity throughout the week to help you form your own learning community. For more description of the project, please refer to our welcome message sent to you in this course. We have also included a social and networking area, which you can feel free to use to get to know one another apart from the course content. We hope that this week together will give you an overview that will allow you to begin applying concepts to your own online teaching. Enjoy!

On our first day, we'll look at how we define or recontextualize community, particularly as it applies to an online class. In addition, we'll talk about how we can effectively facilitate community development online. You will experience this through the development of a group charter to assist you in doing your collaborative work. We've posted a bit of material to help you do that and some questions you'll probably want to consider as you think about how you'll work together this week.

Assignments for Day 1

• Read chapters 1 and 2 in Building Online Learning Communities.
• Listen to the audio clip for day 1.
• In order to make group work successful, all group members must agree to abide by norms established by the group. As your group is forming, please reach consensus on the following items and post your group's charter to the discussion board in your group area:
  • How will your group identify itself? (Your group may choose a name under which to function.)
  • How will the group communicate (for example, through the discussion board, e-mail, virtual classroom, phone, or a combination of methods)?
  • What time during the day will the discussion begin, taking into account time zone differences and busy schedules?
  • How quickly should group members be expected to respond to e-mails or discussion board postings (for example, within two hours, within one day, or something else).
  • What role or duties will each person in the group perform? Among the possible roles are initiator, secretary, liaison to the instructor, motivator, organizer, and the roles assigned by Rena and Keith.
  • Who is responsible for posting group responses to the main discussion board?
  • How will the group handle a member who is not participating?
• Discuss any other topics that are unique to your group.
• Respond to the following question in the discussion area: Do you see community building as an important element of an online course?
• Ask any questions you might have in the Questions for Drs P&P forum in the discussion area.

Day 2: Human and Practical Considerations in Online Learning

On to day 2! Today we'll look at the elements that both help to facilitate the development of an online community as well as some of the elements that might interfere with that development. Some of these elements are fairly obvious—such as group size to facilitate community building and our need to connect and be part of something. Other elements are not so obvious, such as the rituals and connectedness that contribute to the spirituality of online community. We hope that you will have some of your own “aha's” about these and other elements involved in online community as you participate in today's discussion and negotiate your own project.

Assignments for Day 2

• Read chapters 3 and 4 in Building Online Learning Communities.
• Listen to the audio clip for day 2.
• Negotiate in your small group what your final project will look like. Will you build a wiki, do a paper in jigsaw fashion, create a Glogster, a PowerPoint, or a Prezi presentation? Given the short time you have to complete the work, you really need to figure this out TODAY!
• Respond to the following question in the discussion area: How would you as an online instructor work with the elements of online community as they appear?
• Ask any questions you might have in the Questions for Drs P&P forum in the discussion area.

Day 3: Moving Teaching and Learning Online

We're about halfway through an intense and productive week! Welcome to day 3! Today we'll be looking at how instructors can effectively make the transition from the face-to-face classroom to the online classroom. How does our role as instructor change when we teach online? How can we be effective online facilitators? What role does the learner play in all of this? And finally, how can we construct a course to ensure that all of this happens? Through our reading and discussion today, you will gain more understanding of how you can effectively make this transition and begin to implement community-building techniques in your online classes.

Assignments for Day 3

• Read chapter 6 in Building Online Learning Communities.
• Listen to the audio clip for day 3.
• Continue the work on your collaborative project.
• Discuss the following question in the discussion area: What changes will you need to make in your teaching practice in order to be successful online?
• Ask any questions you might have in the Questions for Drs P&P forum in the discussion area.

Day 4: Promoting Collaborative Learning

You're all doing a great job! We're heading into the home stretch, but as we do, we'll be tackling some topics that are of particular importance in working successfully online. Today's topic will be all about collaboration. The online classroom provides a wonderful environment in which collaboration can occur, and the numerous Web 2.0 applications that have emerged in the past few years are helping to facilitate that process. Today we clarify what we mean by collaboration and discuss ways in which effective collaboration can happen.

Assignments for Day 4

• Read chapter 8 in Building Online Learning Communities.
• Listen to the audio clip for day 4.
• Go to the following Prezi site and watch the presentation: http://prezi.com/obqzirjhtf-q/web-20-in-the-classroom/.
• Continue the work on your collaborative project.
• Discuss the following question in the discussion area: What kinds of collaborative assignments would you feel comfortable incorporating into an online class?
• Ask any questions you might have in the Questions for Drs P&P forum in the discussion area.

Day 5: Transformative Learning

You made it! Welcome to the final day of the course! Don't leave us yet because today we'll be talking about an extremely important topic: transformative learning and reflection. Just as you've found from being in this brief and intensive course, this medium encourages us to reflect on questions, material, and the contributions of everyone involved. As a result of all of this reflection, our thinking and learning processes are transformed. In fact, many learners report that after they take a well-designed online course, they feel transformed as a learner.

Today we will complete our course with a discussion of reflection and transformative learning and discuss ways in which to build reflection into the online learning process. You'll also post your project or a link to your project. As you reflect, also reflect on this project and what it was like to work on it with your small group.

We hope that this course has met all of your expectations! In the spirit of reflection, we'd love to hear from you about your experience with this course so that we can improve it for those that follow you. Good luck in implementing all of what we've discussed and with all of your online teaching!

Assignments for Day 5

• Read chapter 9 in Building Online Learning Communities.
• Listen to the audio clip for day 5.
• Post your final project or a link to that project in the discussion area.
• Discuss the following questions in the discussion area: Reflect on your own learning this week. What have you learned? How have you experienced online learning? What recommendations would you make to learners who come after you regarding participation in this online learning experience?
• What final questions do you have this week? Post them in the Questions for Drs P&P forum in the discussion area.