DL Alliance Presentation

Carteret Community College’s Journey towards Excellence in online teaching through aggressive Professional Development

I’m going to review (contrast and compare) where Distance Learning at CCC was before Title III and where we are a year and a half into the grant. I think you’ll be impressed with what we’ve been able to accomplish in less than 2 years, as far as content and course information placement in the blackboards was concerned and CCC had no established procedures for how online courses should be designed, developed and be taught.For the most part it was whatever the instructor wanted to post to the course and this for the most part was primarily text based. In some cases this approach worked fine, however since every online course had a different look, methodology and expectations from the various instructors – there was some frustration on the part of students because there were no standardized course design and development parameters for our online faculty to follow. This was the catalyst for me to develop a set of course design (and content placement) parameters and steps for successful online teaching. We first initiated the Extreme Blackboard Course makeover where a faculty member could make appointments to have their courses “overhauled” both visually and in course actual design and delivery. Looking back I believe this early initiative was a factor in our getting the T3 grant.Once we got the Title III Grant we initiated the DL Pioneer initiative.This is essentially a “train the trainer” professional development program. I initially chose 10 online faculty from across curriculum’s to be a part of this project.

Each faculty member received a laptop and IPod, in addition to being offered a variety of professional development opportunities both in-house and off campus.

We are now into the 2nd year of the Pioneer Program – we have 20 DL Pioneers who committed to one of the following three options.1. Upgrade one online course (total or hybrid) and begin developing a new course. Dl Pioneer must teach at least one of these courses in Spring 2008.2. Upgrading 2 courses that you already are teaching online. Must be teaching at least one Spring 2008

3. Develop a NEW course to be offered Fall 2008. (New online faculty)

In March 2007 T3 funds enabled us to hire Pre-Ah Hill as our DL Instructional Designer. She has conducted approximately 100 “one on one” training sessions (to assist with Blackboard Upgrades) since coming on board. Pre-Ah has also been instrumental in assisting with the various professional development activities across campus and has been at the forefront of learned new instructional delivery software and training others (including me) on programs such as Jing, Camtasia, Garage Band, Imovie, Skype and Movie Maker to name a few.

I see 4 major accomplishments for our DL Program

in the past 18 months.

#1. DL Pioneers and the Mentoring Program. 20 DL Faculty Pioneers in the Program at this time.

#2. BB Boot Camps (Every faculty member both full time and adjunct) that teach online for CCC have been through 4-6 hours of in-depth training and many have worked with Pre-Ah in “one to one” hands-on sessions since last Spring. 6 BB Boot Camps have been offered with one scheduled for mid-March. Faculty receive digital recorder and adjuncts are paid $27 per hour to attend thanks to T3 funds.

#3.Peer Review Process QAP’s – 50 online courses will have been evaluated by a content specialist and instructional designer by April 1, 2008. All online courses both total and hybrid will go through this process by December 2008. Pre-Ah and I are incorporating what we learn from the QAP Process back into our faculty training. Each content specialist is paid $50 per course to do this evaluation. Click Here to Download QAP Master Spreadsheet

#4. The CCC Online Tutoring Initiative spearheaded by veteran online instructor Lisa Taylor Galizia. This pilot program received $8000 seed money to get an online tutoring service off the ground. A tutoring Blackboard “hub” has been developed using IM, Skype, Discussion Boards and E-mail and 4 tutors have been selected. We hope to start offering tutoring services to our Math, English, Biology and Anatomy & Physiology students by March 17th.Title III has also enabled us to take our faculty to a variety of excellent DL workshops, seminars and conferences and next month 3 of our pioneers will be presenting with me at the DL Alliance Conference in New Bern. We are also sponsoring a campus wide DL Forum in the Civic Center on April 22nd. This forum was the result of a DL Problem Solving Session we conducted with our DL Pioneers in December of 2007.

Due to the strides we have made in the past year, CCC was asked to partner with FTCC on Tech Center DL Grant to establish guidelines, processes and procedures for producing instructional media (podcasts, video, simulations) for the entire CC System. We are receiving $8,400 to begin this initiative.So you can see a great deal has been accomplished over the past 18 months, BUT there is still more work to do such as getting more of our faculty producing more rich media content (podcasts and video) in order to address the various learning styles and needs of our online students.As of now we have our faculty have produced approximately 200 Podcasts with 150 of these being stored in our CCC ITunes U site.

Online Faculty Testimonials for Blackboard Boot Camp and Campus Wide Online Teaching Professional Development.

Laurie Freshwater – Director of Health Sciences at CCCThe Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, in North Carolina, the growth rate of allied health jobs was 45.8% from 1999-2005. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that the growth rate of new jobs in health care professions will be 28.8% until 2010. This is twice the rate of job growth in comparison with non-health care professions.As the Dean of Health Sciences at Carteret Community College (CCC), I am responsible for the Associate Degree Nursing, Practical Nursing, Emergency Medical Science, Massage Therapy, Medical Assisting, Radiography, Respiratory Therapy, and Sonography programs. A respiratory therapist by profession, I am also a faculty member for the respiratory therapy program. I believe it is imperative that the division increase the quantity and quality of the online course offerings in order to attract and retain students in the nursing and allied health programs. CCC is located on the coastal southern Outer Banks of North Carolina. Due to its geographical location, health science students must travel distances up to 100 miles (2 hours) to clinical facilities in order to complete required program competencies.

Students will benefit from the availability of online courses by having access to a variety of web-based resources and by providing a schedule that will decrease their travel and on-campus time.I was selected to participate in Phase I of the project which started in January, 2007. As part of the project, I chose to upgrade my Cardiopulmonary Anatomy & Physiology course. I first offered this course online in spring, 2005 utilizing a course cartridge that was available from the publisher for use on the Blackboard course management system (CMS). The course cartridge provided objectives, a text-based summary, a discussion board forum, and tests that corresponded with each chapter in the textbook. After finding the course cartridge to be inadequate in terms of depth of content, visual appeal and interactivity, I spent the next year converting my face-to-face class content to web pages suitable for online viewing. By spring, 2006, I was no longer utilizing the course cartridge.

Since that time, I have developed online courses for RCP Pharmacology and Neonatal / Pediatric Respiratory Care. In spring, 2007, as a Phase I DL Pioneer, I enhanced the courses with content specific visuals, interactive diagrams, and instructional podcasts and vodcasts. Assessments are completed on Blackboard in either an unsupervised or supervised setting. I have created discussion forums to foster instructor/student and student/student communication and collaboration. I also developed and implemented a discussion board grading rubric that I have shared with the faculty at my institution. In the future, I hope to develop web-based laboratory simulations that may be used in the respiratory therapy curriculum and across the health sciences disciplines. Carla Williams, Radiography faculty, was selected to be a phase II DL pioneer. As a relatively new faculty member, she went head-first into the online endeavor. To date, she has converted 3 courses in the radiography curriculum to hybrid courses.

She has produced instructional podcasts and vodcasts. She has placed the assessments for these courses on Blackboard which students complete in either an unsupervised or supervised setting. Melanie Hooper, Practical Nursing faculty, has begun incorporating online components into the practical nursing curriculum. She is currently using Blackboard to post assignments, announcements, clinical paperwork and schedules. Exams are done on Blackboard in a supervised setting.

The Associate Degree Nursing program, which was implemented at CCC in 2005, is in the process of recording lectures and laboratory demonstrations to be able to produce podcasts and vodcasts to enhance instruction. Vonda Godette, Medical Assisting Curriculum Coordinator, is currently developing an online medical terminology course that she will be offered in fall, 2008. Overall, the faculty in the health sciences division desires to provide online offerings for students in the division in order to enhance instruction and to provide an effective and engaging alternative to traditional learning environments. The goal is to increase enrollment and retention in the programs.

Mary Walton, Director of Business Technology

I was the first pioneer selected from my division to participate in this grant. I teach for the Computer Information Technology program and serve as the Director for the Business Technologies Division. I chose to work with our existing CIS 110–Introduction to Computers course and DBA 110–Database Concepts and Applications. As a computer technology instructor, teaching software online has been challenging because we didn’t have the tools necessary to dynamically demonstrate like we do in a classroom setting.

Through Title III funds, I was able to get Camtasia to create videos of what I was doing on screen to demonstrate what I was trying to teach.This was just the beginning for our department. We all attended the blackboard boot camp and started incorporating other video/audio lectures in our courses. Our department also did workshops within our area to teach Camtasia, share best practices, etc. This really started us on the road to Patrick’s idea of “Extreme Makeover”. Title III was the catalyst to get folks motivated and rejuvenated to start rethinking old techniques and methodologies. This year, two of our Business Administration faculty are participating in the project. I am acting as their mentor. We chose to focus on developing microeconomics, macroeconomics and accounting, as these courses serve a larger population of students, including those outside our division. Previously we have offered these classes as traditional or web enhanced only. This spring, all three were offered online for the first time. All sections filled to capacity along with the traditional sections we typically offer.One last thing to mention–iIn the process of adding and revising all of these courses, we didn’t want to overlook quality in what we are trying to accomplish. With Patrick’s guidance, we have implemented a Quality Assessment Plan for existing online courses. Nearly all of the hybrid and online courses for my division have now been through this process. For areas that needed attention, we have focused our attention on instructional design and really taken those courses to the next level. We will be collecting data on all of these courses regarding attrition rates, overall grades, student evaluations etc. to assess student success and satisfaction pre- and post-Title III impact.