Teachology Spring 2014 Edition | Seite 10

Spring 2014 Edition Faculty Spotlight A New Way of Looking at Online Courses By Steven Grosteffon Professor of Mathematics Do you remember the first time you saw a Magic Eye illusion? I do. I was sitting in a high school teachers’ lounge back in the 90s, thinking that someone was trying to play a joke on me. With a little bit of guidance, the illusion came into focus and I was able to truly appreciate what I was seeing. As the title of the book shown on the right so aptly says, I had just found “a new way of looking at the world.” Over the past couple of years, I’ve been teaching mathematics fully online. I’ve enjoyed the experience but success has been somewhat of an illusion. In this article, I will share how attending an Applying the Quality Matters Rubric (APPQMR) workshop has renewed my passion, by giving me a new way of looking at online courses. Discouraged by lower than expected retention and success, I jumped at the opportunity to attend an APPQRM online workshop over the holiday break. It was enlightening and eye-opening. First of all, I was able to experience an online class from a student’s perspective; I had never taken one before. It also brought to light the clear distinction between course design and course delivery. Quality Matters defines course design as the forethought and planning that a faculty member puts into a course, and course delivery to be the actual teaching of the course, the implementation of the design. The focus of the workshop was on course design, using best practices to ensure that assessment and measurement, instructional materials, learner interaction and engagement, course technology, learner support, and accessibility all work together to help students achieve the desired learning outcomes. Since attending the workshop, I’ve been using the accompanying Quality Matters Rubric Workbook for Higher Education to do a self-assessment of my courses. It has been humbling to discover my shortfalls but refreshing to have clear directions on how to make improvements; each specific review standard comes with an annotation for implementation. For example, I used to feature videos of interest on my