Collaborative Course Development for Online Courses

Abstract

Developing a course for online instruction requires content knowledge and understanding of the interactivity, technological requirements, and possibilities in the asynchronous environment. Using a case study method, the researchers investigated the development of an online humanities course by a team of faculty and instructional designers. Data were collected through observation of face-to-face planning meetings, document analysis of group postings at the online site, and interviews with the team members. Using Berge's typology of online facilitator roles and Stark and Luttuca's framework on academic plans, this study examined the roles assumed by team members and the curricular decisions.Distance education has emerged as an increasingly important component of higher education. A report by the National Center for Educational Statistics (1999) showed that a total of 1,680 institutions offered 54,000 college-level, credit-bearing distance education courses to 1.6 million distance students in 1997-1998. In the next 3 years, the number of institutions offering distance education grew by 38%; and more than half (56%) of all 2-year and 4-year degree granting institutions were involved in distance education. Over the same period, the number of students rose to more than three million participants in distance learning in all two-year and four-year institutions, a jump of 85% during the 3-year period (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2003). Although concrete data are not available, estimates suggest that most colleges and universities currently offer one or more courses online.

Institutional Efforts to Support Faculty in Online Teaching

“…Faculty members could then delegate some of these development activities to support staff. This approach resonated well with most interviewees; but three mentioned a desire to remain closely involved with course creation activities so as to understand the course structure, which, in turn, would enable them to teach the course better (Xu and Morris 2007).…”

“…We recommend the collaborative course development model, suggested by Xu and Morris (2007), which utilized a project coordinator who matched the course development activities of four faculty members as they built an undergraduate humanities course. Providing both technological and pedagogical support, this coordinator can facilitate interaction between faculty and technology support staff.…”

Moving Beyond Smile Sheets: A Case Study on the Evaluation and Iterative Improvement of an Online Faculty Development Program

“…Teaching online is different than teaching face-to-face (Stone & Perumean-Chaney, 2011;Xu & Morris, 2007). Without proper training, experienced face-to-face faculty often struggle when moving to an online environment (Natriello, 2005).…”

“…Empower faculty ownership of the seminars Experienced faculty should be identified as soon as possible and encouraged to become mentors to novices in the seminar (Xu & Morris, 2007). Seminar topics should be chosen from faculty's teaching experience to promote faculty ownership of the seminars.…”

Creating a responsive curriculum for postgraduates: lessons from a case in Ghana

“…In fact, relatively few universities have been able to demonstrate the ability to create responsive curricula (Chakeredza et al 2008). Thus there is a need for rigorous research on curriculum development processes and the development of responsive curricula in particular (Xu and Morris 2007).…”