There are many factors to consider in offering a course partially or completely online. Some are within the faculty member's control, and others require support from campus administrative units. Here are some factors to consider.
As the technology improves and as students become more accustomed to technology enhanced learning, online delivery offers the opportunity to use learning time more efficiently and effectively. Web-based course delivery is more likely to affect the distribution of faculty time in the teaching process more than it is likely to increase the amount of time that a faculty member devotes to the development, delivery, and maintenance of a course. Teaching courses on line is a new way of teaching that is extremely adaptable and learner focused. It also greatly extends the range and availability of courses beyond the campus environment.
Faculty time can be divided into three parts: course development, course delivery, and course maintenance. Some faculty members do all of this work themselves. Others have staff support for some or all parts of this process. The amount of development time will vary depending upon individual skills, complexity of course content, and the particular media applications used.
Delivering a course on the web requires time to respond to student questions, read student work, facilitate online discussions, and communicate to build community. Some of this is parallel to time you would spend teaching a regular class. Some of it requires extra time, especially as class sizes grow. Sometimes extra staff support can help lessen the load on the faculty member. Courses where students all follow independent schedules can take more time than those where all students complete assignments on the same time line. An advantage for students and faculty can be the ability to "time shift" learning to what works best personally and professionally.
Course maintenance is very important in an online course. Links to references can disappear over time. As you learn to teach online, you will find new ways to do things that will require changes to your course site. Maintenance activity can help refine course content and delivery for maximum and efficient learning.
Faculty who teach online find they need a powerful, modern computer to maximize their efficiency. A clunky old computer will quickly become a liability when teaching online. A laptop can be useful if you want to work both in the office and at home using the same computer.
Just as a slow computer is a liability in teaching online, so is a slow network connection. If you like to work from home, you might find it worthwhile to invest in broadband services. See Access to UMDNet via other ISPs for more information.
For faculty wishing to use a comprehensive course management system, WebVista and Moodle are enterprise solutions available to all campuses of the University of Minnesota.
ITSS provides a full range of web services on our campus web servers which you are welcome to use for your course web sites. Look for FacultETools on Technology Resources for Faculty & Staff.
Some distance courses use interactive television for part of the interaction.
It is becoming easier and easier to post lectures on the web for downloading to computers or ipod devices. Students who attend lectures on campus use the podcasts and videocasts to review lectures and to study for exams. These resources also make it much easier to reach out to students who cannot participate on campus and allows access to course information either in a synchronous or asynchronous mode. Podcasts do not need to be fancy to be effective—surveys have shown that timing of access is more important to students than the visual or audio quality of the product. Obviously, if the pod or videocast is the primary source of information, it needs to be of higher quality than if it is used for review and study.
A number of faculty doing significant online teaching have additional staff support. ITSS staff members Amanda Evans and Bruce Reeves are available to all UMD faculty, but some units are hiring additional staff to provide support. Some faculty make good use of undergraduate or graduate assistants as well. Interesting interactive media will require special training or special support. When thinking about the cost of a staff member, consider salary, fringe benefits, office space, equipment, networking, and telephone.
UMD Continuing Education is very interested in supporting course development for online delivery, especially for courses and programs that appeal to non-traditional students. Support can be in the form of a stipend for course development, workload release, or other appropriate arrangements according to UEA and college/department workload agreements.
Collegiate units may provide special funding for online courses.
The Chancellor's Small Grants program has sometimes been used for online course support.
Faculty workload issues regarding online course delivery, as currently defined by the UEA faculty contract, are summarized in this Memorandum of Understanding on Distributed Education.
