Online Academy: Improving the Quality of Online Courses at VWCC

Online Academy is an innovative train-the-trainer program for faculty focusing on online course design, pedagogy, and best practices. This program is sponsored by Educational Foundation Faculty/Staff Innovation Grant. About twenty faculty who are currently teaching and/or developing online, hybrid, or web-enhanced courses are invited to participate in this program. Participants will represent multiple disciplines and help establish, implement, and maintain an entity to support and mentor faculty who develop and deliver online credit courses. This program will prepare faculty to positively impact the design of online/blended courses, ultimately leading to student learning and success.
Specific Objective(s):

• Identify the critical elements of online course design and development.
• Explain the Quality Matters (QM) process and underlying instructional design principles.
• Describe the eight general QM standards.
• Apply the QM Rubric to the review of online courses.
• Write and provide useful recommendations for online course improvement.
• Receive “Applying the Quality Matters Rubric (APPQMR)” certificate from Quality Matters.

Program Phases:

1. Friday, June 19: One-day workshop focusing on introducing and implementing Quality Matters research-based standards and rubric (APPQMR workshop). About 23 faculty will be invited to participate this workshop. A certified QM facilitator, Dorothy Connelly, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Distance Learning at Blue Ridge Community College, will present this face-to-face workshop at VWCC.
2. Following the workshop, an Online Academy Cohort will be established. All 23 faculty are invited to participate in the cohort. Regular meetings will be hosted during Fall 2015 and Spring 2016. A Blackboard organization site will be set up for organizing meeting content and share the dialog about best practice of online learning.
3. In Summer 2016 or Fall 2016, two additional "Applying the QM Rubric (APPQMR)” workshops will be offered to faculty who are current teaching or planning to teach online or hybrid/blended courses at VWCC.
4. In Spring 2016, an online course self-evaluation form based on Quality Matters standards and rubric will be developed to help faculty to do self-evaluation prior the formal peer review procedure.

 Online Academy Cohort:
All 23 faculty who has completed the APPQMR workshop in Summer 2015 are invited to participate in the cohort. Regular meetings will be set up during Fall 2015 and Spring 2016. The meetings will focus on best practices of online learning and improve student online learning experience at VWCC. Guest speakers or experts in online learning and instructional design will be invited to present at the meeting. Faculty who are members of the Online Academy Cohort:

• Will serve as mentors and trainers to train and support new faculty and adjunct faculty in designing online course content.
• Will serve as liaisons in their academic school to communicate the best practices of online learning to the administrators and other faculty. 
• Will serve as online course peer reviewer to evaluate current VWCC online courses.

For questions about this program, please contact Carrie Halpin or Jonathan Bayer.