Building Capacity and Foundational Structures to Transition to Remote Instruction
General description of the project
Facing a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, has tested the capacity of institutions to react to emergency and test their preparedness to quickly adapt to new teaching approaches. The work done by the office of Educational Technology for over a decade to establish a framework to expand online learning has proven successful in this emergency. The establishment of policies, development guidelines, support capacity, certification protocols, and gaining acceptance and buy-in from academic departments and governance estructures helped to prepare faculty to transition their teaching to online modalities in record times.
Technologies
The establishment of online learning initiatives centered around a mentoring model and used an online mixed and active learning approach to provide faculty the opportunity to experience the student role and the different online teaching approaches, asynchronous and synchronous. Faculty learned how to efficiently design their courses in Blackboard and utilized best practices to ensure teacher presence, student engagement, UDL were part of their delivery approach. Participants had the support of faculty mentors and instructional design consultants, and EdTech especialists in these intensive three week initiatives to make sure their developed course was ready to be certified.
Explain project results
Before the pandemic, the college had about 25 % (of 470) of the faculty already trained and certified to teach online, and the goal was to have the other 75% trained and certified and be ready to convert all courses to online instruction in the summer and fall 2020. Analysis of pre and post survey results shows that participants of the initiatives reported a 20 % gain in their technology skills levels and confidence levels to teach online. The overall goal to prepare the other 75 % was accomplished in four intensive months, and we are already seeing a smoother fall semester.
Why it should be considered best practice?
For every disaster recovery plan, the key elements are the establishment of structures and protocols to quickly react to emergencies and apply the measures to be operational again. The work done by EdTech to ensure a solid framework to expand online learning has proven to be the disaster recovery plan to be able to quickly transition to remote instruction and make sure the quality of online course design and delivery were present.
Highlights of your proposed presentation
We will share the elements of this framework and talk about the importance of building capacity and gaining buy-in to help with the transition to remote instruction. We will also share the course certification process and rubrics based on national standards, as well as the structure and results of the online learning initiatives.
The Evaluation Committee will evaluate submitted proposals based on the following criteria. Each area will be rated on a scale from 1 to 7 (1= non-satisfactory; 7 =outstanding), for a maximum of 63 points.