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CU Online made giving up a Saturday worthwhile for faculty participants taking part in its online instruction workshop on Jan. 15.
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Training, facilitating, upgrading, advising. The list of CU Online’s services goes far beyond monitoring the online education site. A recent Saturday online instruction workshop for faculty was only one example of the breadth of services CU Online provides in advancing cutting-edge course instruction for students. Organizers say the workshop also confirmed that many dedicated faculty members at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center’s downtown Denver campus are eager to learn.
David Thomas, faculty fellow in technology, and Marty Tessmer, director of the Center for Innovations in Teaching and Technology, orchestrated the workshop, deciding to hold it a full day on a Saturday to best suit all faculty members’ schedules.
”We looked at a lot of workshop formats from across the country,” Tessmer said. “We did the best we could to meet the needs of the people we going to be working with.”
The results were as they’d hoped: A full house of 17 participants from a broad spectrum of faculty – from senior professors, to honorarium, to tenured, to part-time instructors. Buoyed by the enthusiastic response, CU Online is targeting the end of March for its next workshop and already has names of people wishing to participate. Organizers plan to expand the event to include staff as well as faculty and, at the suggestion of participants, they hope to add advanced courses to the agenda.
Thomas said he hoped the workshop helped educate the campus community about the services provided by CU Online. The opportunities the department has to offer run the gamut, he said, and he should know. Thomas, based on the 8th floor of the CU-Denver Building, works throughout the year with campus faculty and virtually with online instructors.
“We work with people all the time,” Thomas said. “If a department wants a workshop with five or six people, we’ll do that. This is an ongoing mission for CU Online: to improve online education and support faculty.”
Thomas helped get the Center for Faculty Development site up and running and teaches a tech course in the College of Arts and Media.
Online instruction is an entirely different technique than classroom instruction, Thomas said, noting that since it’s fairly new, faculty have a more difficult time modeling their approach after a method they’re comfortable with. “You can’t come in and info dump and expect the students to be happy,” Thomas said. “Just like you can’t say in a classroom, ‘I’m going to lecture for 16 weeks. I’ll just spew and they will absorb the material and I will bless them with my knowledge.’ ”
Tessmer said some of the perception that online courses are cold and impersonal is common, but that’s not the case. The workshop highlighted ways to project personality and character – the same as one would in a classroom – to the students. “You can hold office hours. Online instruction just isn’t putting a bunch of material on the web and saying ‘go and find them.’ Students and faculty want the Joan Rivers approach, ‘Can we talk?’ “ Tessmer laughed. “Yes, you can.”
In addition to office hours, setting up a site to chat is beneficial to students and instructors. The workshop covered topics such as day to day details; designing an online syllabi and announcements; crafting group-work to assessing students and more. In addition to all that, Tessmer and Thomas said they fed participants some delicious food and everyone received a flash drive – a memory boost the size of a pack of gum.
”We know people’s time is worth something,” Thomas said. “We want to tell them thank you for doing their part for course quality.”
Tessmer said possible topics for upcoming workshops include web graphics, PowerPoint, encouraging academic honestly, advanced layouts and how to host guest speakers online. Tessmer stressed these are just a few ideas, and anyone with other ideas is encouraged to share by e-mailing martin.tessmer@cudenver.edu or david.thomas@cudenver.edu.
Said Thomas: “People are starting to be aware that this isn’t a passing phase. Those willing to teach online are at an advantage, and there is no inherent downside.”
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