Dr. Stephanie M. Foote is a frequent presenter at the Lilly Online Conference! As a Senior Associate Vice President for Teaching, Learning, and Evidence-Based Practices at the Gardner Institute, Foote seems to be involved in numerous different projects. The title of the session I watched tonight was “Developing an Online Course Redesign Community for Faculty at HBCUs.” Foote shared work to create communities to support high-impact online teaching and learning practices at HBCUs. Dr. Monica Flippin Wynn is a Senior Assistant Vice President at the Gardner Institute and co-presented with Foote. Foote and Flippin Wynn wanted to support the creation of communities of faculty across disciplines teaching at HBCUs. More than 300 faculty participated, and many participants were novice online teachers. Mentors led team meetings that were synchronous. Flippin Wynn talked about the impact of the mentors and their accessibility to participants. Foote described how people were excited to work with mentors and begin the work of online course redesign. The mentors were a team of seven! That’s impressive. They shared informal videos and Jamboards. The course had a syllabus and module topics for four weeks. They focused on fundamentals of teaching and learning online, digital learning technology and tools, principles and practices of course and assignment redesign, and putting it all together. Foote talked about reviewing high-impact online practices. They cited Fink 2016 and points for high-impact practices and situated them in the online environment. “Everyone was a sponge…” was mentioned by Flippin Wynn. They were all learning. Many of the participants continue to teach online, explained Foote. They wanted to offer an opportunity for participants to showcase their work with a written narrative essay, a case study, or a video chronicle. This activity encouraged participants to rethink their teaching strategies. Even after the course, Foote mentioned they continue to work together and reconnect. Importantly, Foote and Flippin Wynn spoke about documenting and sharing the work. They both talked about the community that surrounded the participants and the course. I wish we could do something like this for case studies! We have done something similar for open last year.
