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| Description: | Johns Hopkins University staff have developed a modular WebCT training model and shared materials that can be delivered in online, hybrid or face-to-face sessions. They are flexible enough to meet the needs of both full-time faculty supplementing courses and adjunct faculty developing online courses. In the training model, faculty are first introduced to WebCT as students and then build pedagogically sophisticated course websites with a select set of tools and minimal staff support. |
| Presentation Format: | Oral |
| Topic: | Empowering educators: Professional development models and methods |
| Target Audience: | Course Designers, Faculty and Other Instructors, E-learning Managers |
| Appropriate Audience Level: | Beginning or new users of WebCT, Experienced WebCT users |
| WebCT Version: | |
| Abstract Text: | Johns Hopkins University support staff have developed a new model for WebCT training to serve full-time and adjunct faculty from the Schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. Beyond the usual faculty differences related to teaching preferences and academic discipline, these populations use WebCT toward different ends. The full-time faculty offer web-enhanced courses, while the adjuncts also offer an increasing number of hybrid and fully online courses. The staff infrastructure, implementation policies, and desired timing and modes of training delivery also differ. Staff identified the weaknesses of the prior (marathon) face-to-face training model and used that information to guide development of the new model. In this modular, three phase model, faculty participate in an online training session from the student perspective. The session emphasizes both technical functionality and pedagogical effectiveness of a commonly identified set of WebCT features. The closing exercise is a course shell request, which prompts the creation of an empty course shell that complies with group specific design standards and includes only the chosen tools. Faculty then take training modules on just the tools they need, when they are ready to develop them as designers. They may add additional tools and take the corresponding training modules as convenient. This training design and associated materials may be delivered fully online, or in hybrid or face-to-face sessions, facilitated or independent. The modular units can be accessed just in time and no longer waste faculty time on tools they don’t plan to use. They are small enough to be accessible for time crunched faculty but are designed to form a coherent whole. The design allows faculty to apply what they know to their actual course shell from the beginning, a weakness of the prior training model, which put faculty through stock training exercises on a standard practice shell. |
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