Multiple online short courses offered throughout year for professional development
There are multiple online short courses are offered throughout the year which faculty may take advantage of as professional development. Registration for these professional development opportunities will be facilitated by the Office of Online Learning (OL). Send an email to onlinelearning@mnstate.edu indicating your interest.
Runs: February 3-April 2, 2020 or June 1-July 23, 2020
An interactive, collaborative course intended for instructors who teach online or blended courses, develop their own online teaching and design skills, and share online teaching experiences and best practices. This course is for instructors who are new to online teaching. It is also for instructors looking to expand their skills, explore new ways to engage students, and use technology more effectively to save time. Quality Matters standards, technology tools, D2L training, best practices, and research will be woven throughout all modules. Expect to spend up to four to seven additional hours per week reviewing lectures/readings and completing assignments developed to strengthen your online teaching and design skills. Synchronous weekly meetings are Mondays Noon-1 pm OR Thursdays 5:30-6:30 pm.
Humanizing Your Course
Starts: February 17, 2020
This course is intended for Minnesota State faculty who are either teaching or planning to teach an online or hybrid course and are interested applying evidence-based strategies for humanizing the learning experience through effective facilitation and course design. The course is online and asynchronous. Although there are no scheduled class meetings, participants may engage in virtual meetings with other students and course instructors as needed and at their convenience. The course is designed to take no more than 10 hours of work per week to complete.
Skills to Facilitate Your Course Efficiently using D2L Brightspace Tools
Starts: February 24, 2020
The Quality Improvement Process site provides examples of ways to support student-to-content interaction in courses.
· Fixing courseware glitches, such as broken links, typos, and mistakes, as needed.
· Monitoring learning outcomes based on student interaction with content.
· Improving content as needed to facilitate learner outcomes.
By the end of this three week course you will be able to using D2L Brightspace tools to manage your D2L course efficiently and effectively. You will be provided with key workflows that you need to copy or import course materials, tips and tricks to streamline the process, and strategies for organizing your course schedule. Participants come away with the skills to reuse existing materials in the most efficient manner. Most participants are able to complete this course by committing 5-7 hours per week.
Assessment of Student Learning
Starts: March 23, 2020
How do you really know that your students are learning what you had intended? In this course, you’ll get an opportunity examine the learning objectives in your course (something your students should know or be able to do) and the assessments that are aligned to help measure and evaluate student achievement on this learning objective. During the course, you’ll have an opportunity to explore traditional assessments or performance based assessments and make improvements to your own traditional assessment or scoring rubric to improve validity and reliability, as well as reduce the presence of bias in your assessment. Finally, you will be able apply the wise feedback method to provide effective feedback on a student work sample. Most participants are able to complete this course by committing 5-7 hours per week. 3 week course.
Improving Instructor-to-Student Interaction using D2L Brightspace Tools
Starts: March 30, 2020
The Quality Improvement Process site provides examples of ways to support instructor-to-student interaction in courses.
· Maintaining instructor presence through regular communications (announcements, updates) and specific student-instructor interactions.
· Engaging in heightened monitoring of student progress throughout the first few weeks and actively communicating with students when they get behind or are having difficulty with the material.
· Monitoring student activity and intervening to redirect behavior as needed.
· Providing ongoing, prompt, and substantive feedback early enough and throughout for students to adjust their performance.
By the end of this three week course you will be able to using D2L Brightspace tools including the Classlist, Announcements, Intelligent Agents, and Discussions tools in your course to improve instructor-to-student interactions in your course. You will be introduced to key workflows and effective practices for developing communication, collaboration, and student engagement. Most participants are able to complete this course by committing 5-7 hours per week.