B.4 - Department Examples: Supporting Consistent High-Quality Online Teaching and Learning
- Reading time: 4 min.
- Video time: 0
Instructional Material/COR/Tool Examples
- Using a departmental Canvas sandbox/shell for sharing helpful resources for online instruction, such as best practices for teaching, assignment/activity/assessment examples and templates, videos, discussions (Business Administration, Psychology, Letters, KHAN, Philosophy)
- Working with the college's instructional designer to create Canvas templates to promote continuity between courses (Nursing)
- Using Open Educational Resources (OER) departmentally, and development of in-house course material (Physical Sciences)
- Communicating and sharing regularly about OER resources (Sociology)
- Providing sample course syllabi (Communications)
- Collaborating to develop online lab assignments and accompanying Canvas assessments (Chemistry)
- Purchasing specialized technology tools needed by faculty teaching online (Design)
- Archiving and sharing the historical course prep for each course I have been teaching here (since 2008) . Every new person gets offered this material for their course, with the agreement that if they take it, they will re-archive it and re-share it with whatever improvements they have made. (Horticulture)
- Using wording in Course Outlines of Record that accounts for a flexible, equitable online teaching and learning environment and does not presume access to certain in-person experiences. Examples:
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Computer Science has begun including this in the Methods of Instruction section:
Policies and practices that promote ownership of active learning, such as the following:- Late policy that allows flexibility for various student circumstances.
- Opportunities to resubmit assignments to demonstrate continuous improvement.
- Personalizing choices of assessments to learn computer science and apply it to student's life.
- Regular interactions with students to provide support and feedback.
- Music has changed assignments and methods of instruction away from "attending live performances" to "viewing live and/or recorded performances"
- Psychology has added a Method of Instruction consistent with the option of offering the course as a scheduled online class:
"Class demonstrations and learning activities via Zoom and other video-conferencing solution software." - Several departments have removed a requirement for in-person proctored exams from courses.
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Departmental Sub-Group Faculty Leadership Examples
- Course-specific faculty meetings relating to offering online labs. We formed a remote lab working group comprised of four full-time faculty to take what we’ve learned teaching labs online and create even more robust remote labs. This included revisiting potential lab kit suppliers, evaluating remote lab kits, revising Canvas assignments, creating better Canvas pre-lab assignments, and recording pre-lab videos for use with the remote labs. (Chemistry)
- Curriculum meetings (monthly), where resources can be shared, and also aspects of courses can be discussed, receive feedback, and if needed, decisions made. (Nursing)
- Online Task Force that meets once a month; previously created a set of guidelines for teaching Math online and now promotes the MOE Online Class Quality Guidelines. (Math)
- Pedagogical meetings for some Math courses that have been offered in different modalities, including online. (Math)
Expectations for Online Instruction Within the Department
Examples of General Expectations
- Following the MiraCosta Online Educators Class Quality Guidelines Links to an external site. (Philosophy, Math, General noncredit)
- Adhering to MOE and CCC Online instruction standards (CSIT)
- Staying updated on online ed issues, practices, and locally-developed resources, most of which stem from MOE (Sociology)
- Using best practices as informed by discipline-based education research (Physical Sciences)
Examples of Specific Expectations
- Following specific principles for good practice: Encouraging student-faculty contact; Respecting diverse talents and ways of learning; Encouraging active learning (Computer Science)
- Community-building within the learning environment (Physical Sciences)
- Ensuring that each week for online classes, instructors provide video learning content, at least 10 minutes and preferably created by the instructor (CSIT)
- Utilizing Embedded Tutors from TASC and Supplemental Instructors in online courses (Business Administration)
- Using pre-written email templates provided by the department to faculty that they can use to reach out to their online students to give them onboarding information prior to class starting. (General noncredit)