Office of Institutional Effectiveness
Home > Institutional Effectiveness > Review of Distance Learning Programs
Dallas Baptist University
Online Education Program
Best Practices for Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs
July 2007
3. Faculty Support
As indicated above, faculty roles are becoming increasingly diverse and reorganized. For example, the same person may not perform both the tasks of course development and direct instruction to students. Regardless of who performs which of these tasks, important issues are involved.
Because DBU recognized early on that faculty roles were changing and increasing, we put into place a strong support system (see job descriptions in Appendix 42) for faculty developing online course materials and/or teaching online. The DBU Profhelp team exists solely to support faculty in designing online course materials and digital learning objects so that faculty do not have to become technical experts in order to teach students at a distance. Developing quality online course materials requires a team, not just the content expert (faculty member). Faculty work with the dean of online education to design an effective, engaging course outline and syllabus (see training materials in Appendix 3a) and then rely upon the DBU Profhelp team to instructionally design and load course materials, including time-consuming exam banks.
| 3a. |
In the development of an electronically offered program, the institution and its participating faculty have considered issues of workload, compensation, ownership of intellectual property resulting from the program, and the implications of program participation for the faculty member’s professional evaluation processes. This mutual understanding is based on policies and agreements adopted by the parties. |
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Policies were created and adopted in 1998 alongside the development of the first online course that defines faculty workload, compensation, ownership of intellectual property and the faculty professional evaluation process (see distance education general policies in Appendix 7). Because of the strong support system in place to support faculty teaching online and the decision to limit online classes to 22 enrollments each, an online course will equal a traditional course in an instructor's workload and compensation will remain the same. Compensation is paid as "work-for-hire."
Intellectual property of online course materials is addressed in the course proposal form agreed on by the instructor and the university. Since online course development is compensated in a work-for-hire agreement, the intellectual property of the course materials for online and hybrid courses will remain with Dallas Baptist University.
DBU does not offer tenure to faculty but does provide all full time faculty a process for advancement in rank. Developing online course materials and teaching online may be used as documentation for the advancement in full-time faculty advancement in rank. This process is explained in more depth in Compliance 3.7.2 Faculty Evaluation.
| 3b. |
The institution provides an ongoing program of appropriate technical, design, and production support for participating faculty members. |
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DBU Online Education serves all faculty involved in developing online course materials and/or teaching online. This quality, on-going support provides faculty strong support in content creation as well as throughout the semester while teaching online. Our course development process is one of DBU's secrets to success as faculty primarily become the content expert. Once approved by the Distance Education Steering Committee to develop a course, the instructor is trained in online course design, pedagogy, and using Blackboard and then develops the course content in conjunction with a team of technical developers.
A six-month process involves a quality assurance proofing of the course as well as graphical design and learning objects created specifically for each course offered. Instructors simply email content to a team of technical course designers; usually within 24 hours, the content has been graphically designed, uploaded to the course shell and forwarded to proofing in the respective college.
Professors in each discipline (experts in the content) develop online courses, which follow the standards of content recognized by peer evaluators in universities across the nation. National principles of good practice remain in the forefront of all course and program development. Dallas Baptist University does not utilize ready made, for-purchase course material. The online education department and the faculty invest much time and effort to guarantee quality course development. In fact, DBU Online has won two national "Best Online Course" awards: Blackboard' s 2005 Bbionic Course and ELearning 2006 Course of the Year (see awards in Appendix 46a, 46b). The course honored is ART 1306 Introduction to Fine Arts. The opening screen shot to the course was used in Discovering Computers 2008 textbook by Shelly, Cashman and Vermaat as an example of online education (see Appendix 47).
Interactive learning object development and video/audio support is provided if the instructor chooses to use those in the online course. Instructors combine the use of online text material and lecture content with the use of audio and video streams to teach students at a distance. One of the better examples is the virtual frog dissection used in the online biology classes. Students may view and review the dissection as necessary and explore the lab at their own pace (see Virtual Biology Lab in Appendix 48).
Online course materials are carefully prepared for online delivery as the DBU Online Education Department strives for quality as traditional courses are converted for Internet delivery. The faculty experts (often instructors with terminal degrees in their field of study) initiate course development by proposing a detailed plan for their course development (see course proposal form in Appendix 10). Their high standards for course content in the classroom are consistently reflected in all online course and program design. The instructor and instructional designer ensure all course objectives can be met using the online delivery environment initially map out all online courses.
Professional instructional design is applied to each course after initial development and all courses are proofed for overall design. The ADDIE method of Instructional Design is employed for each online course that is developed and analyzed each semester for improvements. The ADDIE (A-Analyze, D-Design, D-Develop, I-Implement, E-Evaluate) model is a generic model based upon the Instructional Systems Design approach developed by Walter Dick and Lou Carey. This approach for online course design provides a step-by-step system for the evaluation of students’ needs, the design and development of course materials, and the evaluation of the effectiveness of the course material delivery to the students.
Each course goes through a rigorous proofing process utilizing the Academic Web Pages Proofing Procedure and Structure form (see Appendix 54). This intense proofing process takes each course through the college of the respective discipline and the Office of the Provost (Chief Academic Officer) including the online professor, faculty, support staff and the Dean from the appropriate academic college, and the Dean of Online Education. Additionally, the undergraduate faculty curriculum and graduate programs committees oversee all curriculum for the entire University, setting standards and guidelines according to our accreditation requirements. All online programs go through the assessment of the Dean’s Council, Faculty Council for review and recommendation to the Provost and President for final approval.
Complete student course evaluations of faculty are performed and tabulated for every online course (see course evaluation form in Appendix 53d). For every term, this data is presented to all deans and faculty members in three areas: individual faculty rating by students, college average in each criterion and both are compared to the University average in each category. The data is closely analyzed by the Dean of Online Education; if necessary, suggestions for improvement may be made to the instructor in a private meeting.
| 3c. |
The institution provides to those responsible for program development the orientation and training to help them become proficient in the uses of the program’s technologies, including potential changes in course design and management. |
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For faculty course developers, an orientation meeting takes place six months before the online /hybrid course is due completed. This meeting, led by the Dean of online education, disseminates information regarding policies and procedures, an overview of course design, process for course development and the support team, faith integration with online course materials, and copyright/intellectual property of the course materials (see orientation materials in Appendix 3a). Faculty receive Online Education newsletters which highlight tips/tricks for teaching success such as creative assessment strategies and methods to deter cheating (see sample newsletters in Appendix 13). Additional training is provided in a brown-bag format for new technology provisions such as the addition of Questionmark testing or when Blackboard revises their software platform, which is about three times a year. Workshops are always provided during both day and night hours for all faculty access.
DBU does not move to the newest revision of Blackboard software until it has been fully tested and training documents and workshops can be developed for faculty using Blackboard. Online education works closely with the Computer and Technology department in testing the new version on a test server identical to the application server. Testing includes all aspects of the courseware management system including the snapshot interface with the student information system that digitally ports student enrollment information into Blackboard (see Blackboard Testing List). Faculty and students are clearly notified of any downtime necessary to move the servers to a new version and the time is carefully chosen as to affect students and faculty as little as possible.
Faculty also have access to one-on-one training with course developers at any time and additional training materials are provided on the Faculty tab inside Blackboard (see faculty resources in Appendix 28). Faculty were surveyed in Spring 2004 with 94% of all faculty stating they were highly satisfied with the support provided by the DBU Online Prohelp team for faculty teaching online (see survey results in Appendix 14).
New advances in technology to support pedagogy are addressed by the dean of online education in each in the faculty development workshops offered in spring and fall by the university provost. Information is provided regarding topics such as the millennial generation and their expectations for education and technology and the newest tools such as blogs, wikis, and social bookmarking (see sample training handouts).
| 3d. |
The institution provides to those responsible for working directly with students the orientation and training to help them become proficient in the uses of the technologies for these purposes, including strategies for effective interaction. |
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Online faculty training and support for course development and teaching online is provided throughout the year. The dean and assistant director of online education conduct online and face-to-face training sessions for faculty involved in online course development and design; research new and innovative teaching methodologies in technology; and oversee all online course design and deliver required online pedagogy instruction for all faculty teaching online or hybrid courses (See sample faculty training materials in Appendix 3). Ongoing resources are placed online inside Blackboard under a faculty area that include tutorials for using Blackboard, digital learning object repositories, and instructional design resources (See faculty resources in Appendix 28). Training workshops include Blackboard instruction, syllabus development using the DBU Syllabus tool, online pedagogy, and developing materials for teaching in the classroom while using Blackboard support. In less than one year alone, the DBU Profhelp team responded to more than 10,000 emails for faculty support from June 2006 until March 2007.
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