Dr. Katrina Kardiasmenos from Bowie State University and Dr. Mariann Hawken from UM Baltimore County presented a recorded Lilly Conference session about preparing faculty to teach online at their institutions. Both presenters have extensive experience with course design, Blackboard, and Quality Matters (QM). They are Certified QM Reviewers and coordinated efforts to prepare faculty to continue teaching online after the pivot to remote online teaching due to the pandemic. Their institutions are very different, yet they both are part of the University System of Maryland and members of the Quality Matters program. Their challenges included a broad range of levels of preparedness to use their LMS Blackboard. Both had few QM facilitators and faculty. During the summer of 2020, both institutions deployed a series of courses fir instructors to create courses for the fall. Bowie State University offered the Learning Online Teaching with Technology Online (LOTTO) workshops, and UMBC had Planning Instructional Variety for Online Teaching (PIVOT) Pathways. The programs had different formats, incentives fir instructors (funded from CARES funding or repurposed internal grant in the case of UMBC), and duration of sessions. LOTTO 1 was designed to help faculty use Blackboard while LOTTO 2 had the goal of helping faculty design a course that meets QM standards. At UMBC, PIVOT versions helped faculty through webinars, a self directed experience, and a more comprehensive 10-day course. The outcomes for both institutions were ambitious: a complete course for LOTTO 1, 85% on the QM rubric for the course produced with LOTTO 2, and PIVOT ranged but for the intense version the product was a course blueprint and fundamental general standards from QM. The cohorts had facilitators though the participant to facilitator ratios varied. Both institutions had different percentages of faculty course design completion, and several did create complete courses. Presenters expressed the difficulty balancing pedagogy and technical skills (“buttonology”). This makes sense with such a range of entry levels and compressed timelines. The peer support was critical for instructors to learn from each other and in some cases communities of practice developed. I learned a lot and enjoyed the balance and interactions between the speakers during the presentation. This talk also made me realize how lucky I have been to be able to take workshops including the Applying the QM Rubric course. I’m now even more excited about participating in the Teaching Online Certificate and learning from the DELTA group!
