Articles, Ideas, and Innovations in online teaching and learning

Institutional Partnering for Success in Distance Education Degree Program Development
by: Terence Armentatno
Associate Director- IDEAL, BGSU

Guest presenter via Skype - Angie Stoller
Assistant Director of Graduate Studies: College of Business Administration
Bowling Green State University

In August,  I had the privilege of presenting at the 2007 Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning in Madison, Wisconsin on the importance of Institutional Partnering for Success in Distance Education Degree Program Development.  My presentation drew from IDEAL's recent success in partnering with the Executive Masters of Organization Development (EMOD) program in the College of Business Administration to develop BGSU's first blended (part online, part in-class) program. Though on vacation in Ohio, Angie Stoller, Assistant Director of Graduate Studies in the College of Business, participated in the presentation from her home computer using online technology, Skype video. Skype is little piece of software that lets people talk over the Internet to anyone in the world for free and it is a technology that students and faculty in the EMOD program use.  We thought it was appropriate to use such a tool in a presentation about using blended technologies to enhance education.  Angie addressed three reasons that the EMOD department chose to move the program to the blended environment. First, the blended format enables a flexible, accessible, and engaging online environment, which, in turn, enhances the effectiveness of the face-to-face time at BGSU. Second, it is what people in this day and age expect. Prospective students were and continue to inquire about online instruction. Third, the move also enables the college to reach a wider geographic area. A flexible program format allows for a more diverse student population as the current EMOD cohort proves; including students from all over the state of Ohio, as well as Michigan, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas. Because moving a program to an online or blended format requires a lot of change and expertise in online delivery, EMOD partnered with IDEAL and received assistance in the following ways:

  1. Facilitated the process of moving the course delivery method from a face to face environment to a hybrid environment.
  2. Provided technological and online pedagogical training for EMOD faculty and staff through both face to face sessions and a 3 week online faculty training program.
  3. Designed a consistent theme for the program, community spaces, and individual courses.
  4. Developed a system to foster community for both students and faculty.
  5. Identified available and relevant technologies and online services and presented them to EMOD so that they could explore them and choose which to adopt.
  6. Identified the advantages and disadvantages of using various technologies. Many unanticipated benefits and opportunities associated with the technology and services surfaced.
  7. Facilitated the exploration of new media that EMOD had not previously considered, including blogs, voip, podcasts, wiki’s, etc.
  8. Designed, developed, and implemented the EMOD Blog, which serves both the students of the program and the community at large with relevant information in the field of Organization Development. Since its inception, the blog has been read on every continent but Antarctica thus attaining an international audience.
  9. Helped EMOD to implement technologies in the program that enable students and faculty to achieve collaboration across time and distance in a truly global economy.
  10. Helped with the design, development, and implementation of an EMOD demo course for recruiting purposes.

I would like to thank Angie for taking the time during her vacation to participate in the conference via skype.  It is fitting that the experts in change management at the university were the first to move an entire program to the blended format.

If you are interested in moving your program to the blended or online environment, please contact IDEAL.  You can use the following program development checklist, which was developed by IDEAL, as a starting point in deciding if going blended is right for you.

The College's Checklist:

  1. Identify factors that explain why a blended format would enhance enrollment in your program.
  2. Identify the courses to be encumbered for the program.
  3. Develop course schedule/rotation plan.
  4. Identify the best delivery structure of your program (how much time on campus and online).
  5. Develop instructor and department Incentives for participation.
  6. Identify plan for recruitment of the instructors who will develop and/or facilitate the courses.
  7. Develop training for program faculty in blended pedagogy and adoption of new technologies for teaching and learning.
  8. Develop (in collaboration with distance learning and campus marketing team) an enrollment marketing plan.
  9. Identify advising and career-counseling strategies and program liaison for the new blended program.
  10. Develop program assessment plan.

The Distance Learning Team's (IDEAL's) Check List

  1. Assist in navigation of institutional curriculum modification process for development of blended courses.
  2. Establish the protocol to partner with the college to achieve the goals and objectives of the program and the concept design, tech requirements, training, and media to be incorporated.
  3. Create and design course templates for each course in the program with a common online look and feel for the program.
  4. Develop the time line for program implementation.
  5. Develop the time line for individual course development.
  6. Offer ongoing online training and face to face training and support opportunities for faculty.
  7. Assign Instructional Designers and Multimedia Specialists to work with faculty on developing the courses.

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