By the Instructional Design Team at QU Online
This summer online faculty at Quinnipiac University implemented a number of innovative strategies to enhance student engagement and improve learning outcomes. We would like to highlight these faculty members and recognize their efforts to improve the quality of online learning at Quinnipiac University.
Michaela Alexandru – MA206 Statistics for Behavioral Sciences
This summer MA206 Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, taught online by Part-time Faculty, Michaela Alexandru, received the Quality Matters seal of approval, an affirmation of excellence in online course design and novel use of pedagogies in teaching statistical methodologies for quantitative analysis. According to the course reviewers, “The instructor makes excellent use of the content, tools and technology to make the course very interactive and engaging for the student. This is increased greatly by the use of the group collaboration assignments, by not only engaging the student with content but also with their classmates.” The reviewers also noted that, “The course activities are designed to foster higher level thinking. Students are prompted to apply lessons to real-world scenarios.” Furthermore the reviewers commented that, “The course provides many types of materials that appeal to various learning styles. This course took full advantage of a wide variety of tools and media. The use of collaborative elements, simulations, and Breeze presentations offered a nice alternative to the textbook.”
Quality Matters is a nationally recognized, inter-institutional peer review process designed to certify the quality of online courses against eight robust standards. The eight standards include: (1) Course Overview and Introduction (2) Learning Objectives (3) Assessment and Measurement (4) Resources and Materials (5) Learner Engagement (6) Course Technology (7) Learner Support and (8) Accessibility.
Mark Gius – EC111 Principles of Microeconomics
Mark Gius, Professor of Economics in the School of Business, incorporated a series of vid
eo lectures for his economics students. Instead of using a video of a talking head, Professor Gius re-created a lecture he would use in class in front of a whiteboard. The video has Mark nicely positioned to the right while he is showing examples on the whiteboard on the left part of the screen. Since the camera is back a few feet, the frame of the video looks very good. If you enlarge the video player to full screen, you can clearly see the contents on the whiteboard. The lectures are also concise and to the point. Professor Gius explains the examples efficiently, but having the lecture in a video format allows students to go back and watch and listen to the videos as many times as they would like. Being able to see Professor Gius also improved instructor presence in the online course.
Pattie Belle Hastings – IDD110 Design Research and Methods
Pattie Belle Hastings, Associate Professor of Interactive Digital Design and Chair of Visual & Performing Arts, incorporated Camtasia Studio into her online course this summer to provide her students with feedback about their weekly assignments. Instead of giving a critique in pure text format, Pattie Belle utilized the video tool in Camtasia to record herself with her webcam as she pointed out different aspects and elements of the submitted assignments which were also being screen recorded as she was speaking. This strategy of providing feedback with voice and video enhanced instructor presence in the online setting in addition to personalizing the online learning experience for her students because they could hear the tone of her voice and see her face as she gave them a critique. Additionally, students were able to watch each other’s video critiques in a public forum wiki so that they “could learn from each other’s success and mistakes.”
Jennifer Rafferty – NU510 Beginning Spanish for Health Care Professionals
Jennifer Rafferty, Associate Director of Instructional Design and Adjunct Faculty for the School of Health Sciences, employed an interactive tool called VoiceThread to create dynamic weekly exercises for students to practice their speaking skills in the target language. Students were paired up and asked to prepare a script that would ground their learning for later application in a real-life, clinical setting. Students then logged into this interactive web-tool, which was embedded in Blackboard, and they recorded their lines at their own convenience to create a back-and-forth dialogue to test-drive their newly acquired vocabulary and grammatical structures. In the first week of the course, Jennifer provided students with a quick and easy VoiceThread exercise so students could familiarize themselves with the tool before launching into the more complex team activities. The collaborative nature of this tool has created an environment where students can connect with one another asynchronously and recreate pair activities that are often employed in an on ground communicative language class. Below is an example of how the VoiceThread was used in the course.
