What if We Put Best Practices into Practice?: A Report on Course Design

Beyond Quality Matters

Dr. Tamara PowellDr. Solomon Negash

Kennesaw State UniversityKennesaw, Georgia, USA

INTRODUCTION

The Education Situation in the US

The Education Situation in the US

• Average $24,466 per year for tuition, room, and board (Fast Facts)

• Average student graduates with $27,000 in student loans (Ellis)

• Majority of full time students (60%) take 7 years to earn a Bachelor’s degree (Marklein)

• Majority of Americans do not have a Bachelor’s degree

What We Want: Strategies that

• Increase retention• Foster completion of courses• Foster completion of programs• Foster completion of college• Increase employability• Increase critical thinking skills

We are not ambitious at all.

BACKGROUND

Quality Matters

Quality Matters• Best known, most widely used and

researched system to measure quality of online courses in US.

• Contains 21 “essential standards” that must be met.

• Standards relate to course design: are course goals measurable, is syllabus clear, is grading clear, does content relate to course goals, etc.

RESEARCH SUMMARY

The Research Points to Directions for Solutions

Research-Supported Solution 1

Clear paths through courses and programs (Kamenetz)

Across the centuries, the mere availability of education has not equated with greater levels of attainment. Citizens, and students, need help.

Research-Supported Solution 2

Communication with the professor (Arum and Roksa)

Studies show that students who communicate with their professors do better than those who do not. Students should be encouraged to communicate with their online professors via email, telephone, Skype, or other methods that are agreeable to the professor.

Research-Supported Solution 3

Rigorous courses (Arum and Roksa, Means)“The [online] practice with the strongest

evidence of effectiveness is inclusion of mechanisms to prompt students to reflect on their level of understanding as they are learning online,” such as one-minute reflection writing assignments or shorter writing assignments that ask students to address what they have learned in a particular context (Means 52).

Research-Supported Solution 4

Clear identification of skills learned in class and clear explanation of how those skills can be marketed to employers (Kamenetz)While to us as faculty it is very obvious why we are teaching our students what we are teaching them, it is a good idea to take that extra step and translate the classroom experience into a marketable skill.

Research-Supported Solution 5

Goal setting (Davis, Bargozzi, and Warshaw 984)

By encouraging our students to set goals, we increase their chances of reaching them.

OUR RESULTS

Our Approach, Methods, and Preliminary Findings

Best practice strategies Pedagogical applications Technical applications

1 Goal setting. Increase success by encouraging goal setting.

Set desired academic, professional, and personal goals.

2 Clear paths through course and program goals.

Measurable goals for each module.

Track actual vs. desired goals.

3 Student-professor communication regarding course and program goals.

Email, telephone, and Skype communication.

Weekly professor feedback on assessements.

4 Rigorous course work to achieve goals.

More expectations with clear and reasonable goals.

Feedback look on performance to encourage rigor.

5 Clear identification of learned and applied skills that advance career path.

Relate classroom learned skills to career path.

Track career path against course learning outcomes.

Creating a Graphic Representation

of Goal Achievement

The Schedule Assignment

The Schedule Assignment: Pilot Results

• Piloted this summer in online technical writing course of 44 students (average class size is usually 27).

• Course has 97% retention, with 95% actively participating.

• Average: 88% retention with 80% active participation.

CONCLUSION

Results and Future Research

Immediate Plans

• Implement and research schedule activity on wide scale in fall 2013.

• Add technological solution in summer 2014.

Future Research(ramping up and applying broadly)

• Developing phenomenographic strategies• Implementing online career portfolios• Tracking of student progress• Tracking of student employment• Implementing writing portfolios to measure

critical thinking skills across programs

Thank you!Questions?