Moving to Online-Only Instruction: An Instructional Designer’s Point of View.
| To help our university meet the needs of the students and the needs of faculty members during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center for Online Learning and Teaching Technology (COLTT) created professional development opportunities and projects that facilitated change in our Institution during this time and beyond. As a department, we were able to implement strategies and plans to promote faculty and student success. As a response to the outbreak of the coronavirus, with our university canceling in-person classes and moving to online-only instruction, COLTT was instrumental in meeting the increased numbers of online courses. We have been able to go through the crisis using the resources that we already had at COLTT. Instructional Designers provided QM certification workshops, technology training, online course design, and course delivery webinars, and managed two summer Blueprinting workshops. With the same number of Instructional Designers, the university increased the number of online courses, from 600+ online courses before the pandemic, to 1,450+ online courses during the pandemic. Success Indicators: Faculty workshops offered in March in response to the outbreak of the coronavirus prepared over 300 faculty members who traditionally teach face-to-face courses in Online Course Design, Online Course Delivery, utilizing the Blackboard LMS, and Applying the Quality Matters Applying Rubric (APPQMR). Development of two 6-week summer intensive course blueprinting Quality Matters certification workshops where 300+ faculty worked on developing fully online high-quality master courses, following course design best practices and standards. |