Where do you Start?

Are you ready to offer your UWF course online? Are you concerned and confused about what steps to take to make the transition from traditional face-to-face instruction to teaching online?  For many, this can be an uncomfortable transition. The Academic Technology Center serves as the central support service to help faculty design, develop and implement online courses that are interactive, engaging and pedagogically sound. 

ATC subscribes to Quality Matters™ (QM) http://www.qualitymatters.org/ as a strategy to improve the quality of existing online courses at UWF.  ATC entered into the partnership officially in December, 2008.  QM is a faculty-driven peer review process of online courses that aligns to a research based rubric of online course quality.  For folks that have been through Studio e may have seen the 'public' QM rubric, but there is a lot more to it, including extensive research literature to support each aspect of the rubric. A fully annotated version of the rubric includes examples and strategies for each aspect of the 8 part rubric. One of the benefits of our subscription with QM is access to the fully annotated version of the rubric.

The QM rubric serves as:

• guidelines for the design and development of new online courses
• a checklist for improving existing courses

Contact Cindy Mersereau (cmersereau@uwf.edu) in the Academic Technology Center for access to the fully annotated rubric. Learn more about QM at UWF.

The ATC design team provides support and assistance to assure that your online course is designed to facilitate successful completion of student learning outcomes.  This website will help you:

• recognize how teaching online is different from teaching in the classroom
• prepare your course for the online environment
• design, organize and maintain your online course
• locate resources to support you through the process
• locate the latest research about online learning
• apply best practices proven to be successful in providing an engaging online learning experience for both students and instructors

Learning in the 21st century for many students means:

• access to information and course content on their own schedule
• no class attendance requirement
• the ability to review course content and presentations as much as necessary
• learning at their own pace

For these and many other reasons, learning online is very different from learning in the classroom. This can be a major adjustment for most faculty, because what you have used for teaching materials in the past may not be suitable for the online environment. However, fear not! The same teaching principles hold true whether teaching face-to-face or online. Recall the study by Chickering and Gamson (1987) on the seven principles for undergraduate teaching. Many web-based learning environments are guided by these principles of good teaching practice. Read this article to learn more (pdf).

Before you begin the online course design process, think about what your students need to learn in your course, rather than what you will teach. Thinking with learning in mind can help with the design process immensely.

Go to the Design Process