Congratulations to Our Latest Online Course Development and Teaching Certificate Graduates!

More than 300 members of the Eastern Kentucky University community have completed the EKU Online Course Development and Online Teaching Certificate program. The intensive 8-week program is sponsored by the Instructional Design Center in the Office of eCampus Learning.

The course, designed to help professors transition their in-person teaching skills into the online classroom, covers a number of topics, including the Community of Inquiry (COI) model of learning and Quality Matters (QM) assessment, as well as how to use blogs, wikis, and discussion boards more effectively. Participants learn in the same ways their future students will, with online assignments, readings, assessments and discussions. Participants also attend three required face-to-face meetings. Faculty/student engagement is strongly emphasized, along with other teaching best practices for the online modality.

“It’s so gratifying to see faculty embrace online learning and watch as strong professional relationships are made between faculty and the instructional designers throughout the course,” said Steve Dwinnells, director of the Instructional Design Center.

One of the most important aspects of the entire program is that faculty members get to experience an online course as students, which allows them to understand how self-discipline, self-pacing and time management affect students’ success.

For their final assignment, each participant creates a media project that they can or will use in an upcoming online course. Projects from previous sessions can be viewed on the Instructional Design Center’s website under “Faculty Showcase.”

Published on November 29, 2018