Carolyn Gentle-Genitty, Ph.D., IUPUI Online Faculty Fellow
July 1, 2016, I was appointed as IUPUI’s first faculty fellow for online education. As a fellow, I report directly to Senior Associate Vice Chancellor Margie Ferguson in the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer Kathy Johnson (Office of Academic Affairs). My one-year charge was to aid the campus in translating its general education offerings to online and strategically collaborate with all campus and 18 academic units to advance online education at IUPUI. To accomplish this charge, I sought support and collaboration from many units particularly e-Learning and Design Services and the Office of Online Education.
In this blog post, I will share a major highlight of convening a group of faculty, staff, and scholars around online education teaching and learning to create IUPUI’s newest cohesion: The Campus Forum on Online Education.
The Campus Forum on Online Education was established November 2016. It began as a conversation on online over tea. A catchy name but resulted from trying to reach out to units with busy schedules. The re-occurring answer was ‘can we meet briefly over coffee first?’ Rather than hosting singular discussions, it was open to all units. I booked a room, organized informal spaces, put on hot water, bought tea and goodies, and welcomed guests to chat informally and briefly. The goal was to get questions answered quickly and make the needed connection to forward individual agendas in a mutually beneficial and safe space.
In January the group requested a formal name be chosen. The Forum brings together representatives from each school, on the IUPUI campus and related service partners, with interest in online. It is not restricted to faculty. The Forum serves as a convener to discuss and process online education and related activities, on the IUPUI campus. It aids in unpacking processes and offers a portal to facilitate sharing and recommendations. In its convening role, it offers a place and space for related campus bodies and committees such as Indianapolis Faculty Council (IFC) Distance Education Committee, IFC Technology Committee, and Gateway Faculty Committee on online and individual unit partners to discuss and share. The group meets every six weeks, informally for 45 minutes. Other collaborations are held outside of the meeting space to facilitate achievement of specific goals. Membership is at 48 members.
Topics tackled since inception have included:
- Disjointed communication when it comes to online education at IUPUI
- Quality Matters and whether it’s highly recommended or required and what mechanisms are in place to ensure its implementation and use (or not) by schools
- Use of Face-to-face Course Evaluation for Online course evaluation purposes / Continuous Evaluation of Online Courses
- Online Writing Support
- Process for developing and approving collaborative degrees with particular concerns around
(Preparation, MOAs and order of constructing them, advising faculty, need for examples to be available to all, enrollment caps for online and collaborative, role of graduate and undergrad, fees and costs, and support) – https://uaa.iu.edu/~evpuaa/academic/program-development/collaborative-programs.shtml - Directory of experts on our campus engaged in online
- CTL and location for online innovation with financial incentives for faculty
- Training options for faculty to teach online
Stay tuned for another blog on advancements made on faculty interaction in online courses and quality matters.
Resources
- Link to IU and IUPUI data on online – https://teachingonline.iu.edu/about/index.html
- Link to teaching online series – https://teachingonline.iu.edu/about/index.html
- Canvas Showcase https://teachingonline.iu.edu/support/tools.html
- Faculty Media Production Space https://teachingonline.iu.edu/videosupport/
- The Quality Matters one-page rubric can be downloaded from the link at https://www.qualitymatters.org/rubric, but users may need to make an account with QM because this is a subscriber-only service.
- E-Learning and Design Services – https://teachingonline.iu.edu/about/eds/index.html