By Marie-Pierre Huguet, Ph.D., Senior Course Developer, Office of Undergraduate Education, Center for Educational Innovation, Research, and Outreach, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
As a course developer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, I have the privilege of working with very talented faculty – three of whom have won the Blackboard Exemplary Course award: Professor Danchak with GUI Building in 2003, Professor Wright with International Business in 2005, and Professors Haley and Steiner with Nuclear Phenomena of Engineering Analysis in 2007.
Three courses. Three departments. Three delivery modes. Three instructors. As different as they possibly can be. How did we do it?
Did we discover the perfect formula? Unearth the magical blend of tools and techniques? Concoct the absolute cocktail for success? Did we design a flawless template? Identify every educational nook and cranny? Embed effective practices? Did we master the rubric? Encapsulate the criteria?
No, not really, but it would be nice to think so. Still...how did we do it?
With reflective collaboration, effective communication, formative and summative evaluation, shared passion, absolute dedication and trust, sound pedagogy … and a touch of lunacy. Not all measurable components, I agree, but all critical to these exemplary successes.
As with most blended or online courses taught at our institution, we followed the constructivist instructional design process we created to work with our instructors. In this emerging kind of instructional design, the instructor is at the core of the ID process and his/her teaching style considered at all times so that it can be embedded in the design.
Throughout the framework provided by ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate), course developers and instructors work collaboratively on the course. As a result, each course not only looks different to reflect the subject taught, but includes a customized navigational pattern, course specific elements, and carefully selected tools. They combine to closely support the course overarching teaching goal and objectives, allow for a student-centered design, and promote teaching presence. The course design was captured in the design brief, a dynamic document that was at the heart of our dialogue.
One of the critical tools used during our summative and formative evaluation stages, was the exemplary rubric, which we used for the first time with GUI building. It closely paralleled our design standards and allowed the instructor to reflect on the design and implementation of their course. One of the strengths of the design rubric is that it allows the instructor to closely look at his or her site and reflect on its strengths and weaknesses. Although we never set out with the design brief in one hand and the exemplary rubric in the other, both were an integral part of our process. As we did with the constructivist instructional design we followed, both tools were used when it made sense to do so.
Sometimes formatively with the documents in front of us, scribbling away as the discussion went on. Sometimes summative when we needed to distance ourselves from the design. But always reflectively and always collaboratively.
"Nuclear Phenomena of Engineering Analysis" – Tom Haley
(See the course here.)
Nuclear Phenomena for Engineering Applications (NPEA) surveyed the quantitative and qualitative aspects of how atomic and nuclear phenomena apply to our everyday lives through technology and the environment. In a world that is increasingly welcoming and relying on responsible applications of nuclear technology to achieve global prosperity, the knowledge that NPEA provides can open significant career, discovery, and technology leadership opportunities. NPEA also surveys the implications of nuclear technology to instill awareness about what “responsible application” can mean.
BEST PRACTICE:
The discussion board utilization in NPEA stands out as a best practice in an engineering class. There were three types of discussion forums used: course management, enrichment, and mentoring. The three course management forums were the:
- Evaluation journal – a private forum for the course team to post suggestions for immediate or long-term course improvement (or just to vent), in real time and in a central archived location.
- The course information – to post announcements, corrections, etc. Only the course team could make original posts to this forum, but the students could reply to a post there.
- Student lounge – for students to introduce themselves, contact peers (e.g. to form homework/study groups, etc.), discuss the course, vent, etc., (within the limits of proper netiquette, of course).
The weekly enrichment forums posed topical discussion questions. The discussions covered contemporary issues, investigation, and understanding and interpretation of qualitative material. Most topics required an initial post within three days of class before reading the posts from others, and then a reflective follow-up post before the next class after reading other students’ posts.
The degree of interaction was kept small by creating group threads within a forum with about six students each: small enough to encourage a student to carefully read the other five posts in their thread in order to reflect on any themes or trends that might be observed.
The “Anonymous Q&A” discussion forum became the primary “meeting place” of students on-line. Being anonymous, students felt comfortable asking any question – including questions they might be afraid were “stupid.” All students were able to benefit from these questions and answers, and could refer back to the forum throughout the course. Questions beyond the required course material were asked and answered without annoying anyone (e.g. “Will this be on the test?”).
"International Business [12]" – Frank X. Wright
(See the course here.)
In this course, students understood globalization and the changing nature of international business including country and culture factors; probed the global trade and investment environment focusing on the political economy of international trade and foreign direct investment with regional economic development; developed an awareness of the global monetary system, especially foreign exchange and capital markets; and finally practiced the developed skills for international strategy, business organizations, operation management (manufacturing and materials management, finance, marketing, human relations and accounting).
The course, by design, encouraged students to think and make practical decisions by exposing them to actual international business management situations and engaging them to discover their own solutions. The written assignments included industry and company research that required the students to reflect on their course of study by expressing their assessment of international business subject material, including selected research, development of an international business philosophy, student interaction, and content relevancy.
The LMS component of International Business fostered a community of learners both face-to-face and at a distance, captured the instructor’s teaching style, and enabled situated learning for students with different learning styles.
Streaming video captured the instructor-learner interaction in the face-to-face component of the course, as well as the instructor-learner, learner-content, and learner-learner interaction. In almost every video, students could hear the instructor quote from the discussion board and respond to what was said.
Customized content modules presented the students with the content for the "Current Week;" Ready Reference linked to pertinent resources, Reading Rooms provided ancillary resources, and an International Business News area featured recent news about content related events. Students were inspired at the start of each module by a "quote of the week" and a link to past issues.
"GUI Building" – Michael Danchak
(View the course here.)
This course was targeted at the person who was going to implement rather than design, the user interface. The focus was on software architectures for user interfaces and the tools and techniques required for programming those interfaces. The concepts of the course relied strongly on foundations from computer graphics and deals with issues of the model view-controller class of problems. Special emphasis was put on software internationalization and code design techniques to meet those requirements. An object-oriented language was be used as the course language.
BEST PRACTICE:
This course, based on the Kolb model, was designed to provide students with a blend of synchronous and asynchronous interactions with the instructor taking the role of a tutor/mentor. GUI Building offered a blend of interactions that allowed the students to interact with their instructor (discussion den, email, chats), with each other (group work, discussion board, student homepages, chats), and the content (QuikQuiz, course pages, videostreams, Explanations).
GUI Building not only used the LMS features that best enabled the instructor to meet the course objectives, and provide dynamic interaction to all participants, it also expended the capabilities of the LMS to incorporate other media, such as the QuikQuiz, Flash, and video streaming.
