Course Development and Instructional Design #9
9 Course design promotes both faculty and student engagement.
Deficient Developing Accomplished Exemplary
The Online Teaching Standards and Indicators and the Minimum Instructional Expectation for Faculty outline specific requirements for faculty engagement. Standard 4 Interaction and Collaboration provides examples of how to design course elements that encourage learner-to-learner interaction as well as learner-to-faculty and learner-to-content interaction.
The T3 (Teaching Tips and Techniques) series addresses the topic of student and faculty engagement and provides ideas and examples that faculty are encouraged to adopt in their courses.
Each student and faculty member can use Zoom web conferencing and Zoom IM to communicate with other students and the instructor. Faculty are easily able to chat and meet with students in the class; and students can easily get in touch with each other.
Each course syllabus provides faculty contact information and faculty members are required to be available for communication with students. Faculty members are encouraged to clearly state their preferences for communication.
Faculty members are encouraged to use rubrics to clearly define expectations of required student engagement. For example, discussion participation can be formally assessed for frequency and for content; rubrics for evaluating discussion posts are shared in the Teaching Online course. Another example: Strategies for successful group participation are provided to all students in the required INFO 203 course and are applied in the core courses that follow.
Regular peer reviews provide the opportunity to revisit the School’s standards and continually improve in designing for increased student and faculty engagement.
