2022-2023 | Sonoma State University | OCS Grant Report

At Sonoma State University, we proposed to complete the HyFlex Pilot in Summer and Fall 2022 with the goal of informing larger training programs to be held in future semesters. We also proposed to lead a campus-level working group with the goal of forming a 5-10 year master plan for online and hybrid education at SSU. Finally, we sought to continue offering our Level 1 and Level 2 Online Course Design Institutes for faculty. Our supplemental goals included ongoing QLT certifications and participation in the SQuAIR project. 

• We successfully completed the HyFlex Pilot in 2022 and are planning for larger HyFlex opportunities in 2023
• The Academic Master Planning initiative at SSU is presently underway and involves a number of specific objectives around online and hybrid education
• We completed a cohort of Level 1 and Level 2 in the Fall 2022 semester, and redesigned our self-paced support class as an ongoing resource for all faculty

Campus Goals for Online Course Services

The focus of our proposal was to 1) design and facilitate a HyFlex pilot with the goal of supporting additional modalities of instruction at SSU, 2) to develop a working group to identify needs and planning for online and hybrid instruction at SSU, 3) to support continued online and hybrid instruction, 4) to continue offering our Level 1 and Level 2 professional development courses, and 5) to achieve five QLT course certifications within the grant year.  

Our goals, as pertaining to campus needs and student success, seek to provide flexibility and increased access to higher education opportunities, for our faculty to be highly prepared to design and facilitate quality online and hybrid courses, and to work with campus administration to identify the feasibility of new proposals for distance based degree and certificate programs. 

Goals:

• Complete HyFlex Pilot in Summer and Fall 2022 with the goal of informing larger programs to be held in Spring and Summer 2023
• Lead campus-level working group with the goal of informing a 5-10 year master plan for online and hybrid education at SSU
• Continue to offer Level 1 and Level 2 online course design institutes for faculty
• Complete 5 additional QLT Certifications

Online Course Services Lead(s)

• Justin Lipp, PhD, Director, Center for Teaching and Educational Technology
• John Lynch, PhD, Assistant Director, Center for Teaching and Educational Technology
• Kristin Denver, Psy.D, Senior Instructional Designer, Center for Teaching and Educational Technology
• Gina Baleria, PhD, Assistant Professor of Journalism

Supporting Campus Partners

Center for Teaching and Educational Technology, School of International and Extended Education, Information Technology, Disability Student Services, Office of the Provost, School of Education. SSU Faculty and Staff subject matter experts.

Campus Commitment Toward Sustainability of OCS Efforts

• Ongoing support for continued offerings of Canvas Design Foundations (Level 1) and Online Facilitation Fundamentals (Level 2) programming
• Development of SSU's Quality Learning and Teaching (QLT) website
• SQuAIR Research Project
• Graduate Initiative support for increasing students' course accessibility
• Weekly trainings to support faculty on Canvas design, accessibility, gradebook and rubric design, UDL, and a variety of other topics

Summary of Previous OCS  Accomplishments

• Contribute to launch of SSU’s first state-supported master’s program
• Provide expanded support for certified QLT course review
• Continued efforts to establish campus working group to centralize and enhance support for online course certification

Conference Attendance:

• We participated in the DET/CHE conference this year after having not been able to for several years.  We found a number of the sessions useful as well as the opportunity for additional networking.

Training Completions

Course Peer Review and Course Certifications

SSU has established a workflow and QLT website to support faculty efforts for those seeking QLT Self-Review and/or External Review. The Canvas Design Foundations (Level 1) and Online Facilitation Fundamentals (Level 2) are designed based on the QLT Rubric exemplary practices and serve as prerequisites for the QLT certification process. In these programs, faculty receive the benefit of peer and facilitator feedback during the course design/redesign phase.

SSU has successfully completed three additional QLT Certified courses this year, with two additional course reviews in the queue. 

• EDEC 460: Yajuan (Vivian) Xiang (Nov. 30, 2022)
• EDEC 532: Nanette Schonleber (Dec. 9, 2022)
• ANTH 313: Karin Jaffe (March 28, 2023)
• ANTH 201: Stephanie Etting (pending review)
• ANTH 318: Stephanie Etting (pending review)

The following individuals are SSU Certified Peer Reviewers: 

• Justin Lipp
• John Lynch
• Kristin Denver
• Gina Baleria
• Kyle Falbo
• Noelia Franzen
• Tim Hensel
• Krista Altaker

Student Online Quality Assurance Impact Research 

SSU participated in the SQuAIR project during the 22-23 grant year with the assistance of Dr. Omayra Ortega, SQuAIR Faculty Associate. Our Research Questions sought to collect and interpret data based on the following:
 

• Question 1: Survey of Student and Faculty Satisfaction with Online Education at SSU
• Question 2: What is the correlation between Canvas usage data and DFW Rates?

We quickly found that SSU had already conducted a study via UPCEA in 2021 regarding Student and Faculty perceptions of Online Education at SSU. Rather than conduct a redundant survey, we shifted our efforts to Question 2. 

In doing so, we identified a huge repository of data regarding engagement levels, diversity of activity types, and types of technology used to access Canvas, however this data proved to be in a format that was challenging to ingest and hand off to Dr. Ortega's Statistical Consulting students for interpretation.

In conjunction with our LMS Admin, Kyle Falbo, we were able to locate a Canvas API that will allow the Center for Teaching and Educational Technology (CTET) to collect this data and continue our work with Dr. Ortega separate from the SQuAIR project during the coming academic year.

Using Canvas Data: Challenges and Opportunities (Slide Presentation)

Development of Campus Online Course Services Resources

• Canvas Course Design Foundations (Level 1)
• Online Facilitation Fundamentals (Level 2) - Canvas Commons
• Online Course Design Template - Canvas Commons
• All Instructors - Canvas Self-Paced course - Canvas Commons
• ECS Course Design Template - Canvas Commons
• BUS EMBA Course Design Template - Canvas Commons
• QLT Webpage
• Online and Hybrid Teaching webpage
• HyFlex Training Course - no link available

Accessibility/UDL Efforts

• Canvas Accessibility Tools
• ALLY/Canvas integration
• UDL and Accessibility content in Level 1 and Level 2 programming
• UDL, Accessibility, and ALLY workshops offered by the Center for Teaching and Educational Technology
• QLT self-review and external certifications
• Partnership with DSS
• ATI/UDL group - SSU has put forward $50,000 in permanent graduation initiative money annually starting in 2022-23 to support accessibility efforts related to instruction. 
• ALLY Accessibility Score Research Project (SQuAIR project 21-22)

Next Steps for OCS Efforts 

• Support 10 new faculty to complete QLT reviews
• QLT course redesign FLC & SQuAIR research program
• HyFlex faculty working group (no OCS funding is required)