The first point made that really resonated with me was that folks helping faculty teach online should really be teaching online themselves. Duh, I know, but I’m not currently doing so, and I think I need to be to better help the faculty I work with. Our DL department could be offering a number of online courses, including:
- online course development
- online student orientation and study skills
- tech literacy (educational/professional portfolio creation — blogs?)
- “cross-over” subjects, such as learning/teaching on the web, writing online, etc. (toe-stepping alert, so we’d procede carefully, of course)
Incentivizing professional development.. can we afford to do this (or to not do this)? I think our best bet will be to build in immediate rewards for instructors who partake in our workshops and peer-review processes, specifically a quality course that’s ready to teach. There will need to be a discussion, I think, about this investment by faculty, and we’ll need to ensure that the time we spend results in resources that can be helpful for everyone. How can we build into the course development process products that can feed back into the course development process for other faculty?
What about team-teaching for all first-time online instructors? First term, you co-teach with another, more experienced instructor. The next term you’re on your own. The third (fourth? fifth?) term you mentor another, less experienced instructor. The feedback loop is completed, and you’re free to get back to work 
(I better post this now to make sure I’m proceeding as I should. I’ll hopefully open this up for editing later. Okay, I’m back!)
These presenters have built in, perhaps as an extension to their faculty development model, an online student tutorial system. We’ve talked awhile in DL about how student support and faculty support should inform each other (reciprocity ftw!), so this could be a way to connect the two more clearly.
It seems evident to me that there is a lot of subjectivity involved in course design, especially while we’re still in the web-page-design phase (eventually students will be choosing designs for themselves, while we just provide the content and course-work structure… right?). I think the best approach continues to be, “I’m here to help you do what you want, and, if you don’t have something in mind, here is a tool set for your consideration.”
I’m kind of coming around full-circle here, but I’m hearing (imagining?) too much “getting faculty to do what we want,” which I see as similar to too much “getting students to do what we want.” As was mentioned in this morning’s session, respect is fundamental if this endeavor is going to work.
(Interesting [to me] thought that has reoccurred this week: everyone is very interested in URLs and tool-names. Isn’t this an outmoded way of thinking? Shouldn’t we just get the general idea, or at most write down the name, and then, if we want, go Google it or find this on the ITC site?)
