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2023-24 Cal Poly SLO 

A Sea Change

Cal Poly's Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology provides support and informed and consistent quality reviews for all participants in the QLT award cycle, and promotes high quality online and hybrid course development across the University. We are also navigating the Quarter to Semester conversion while anticipating a Year Round Teaching model, and have been informed we will potentially be absorbing an administrative role for CSU Maritime. It is indeed a sea change!

Quality Assurance Lead
  • Catherine Hillman, MS Ed.

Instructional Design Team

  • Pamela Dougherty, MS Ed.
  • Tonia Malone, MS Ed.

Supporting Campus Partners 

  • Academic Programs & Planning
  • Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology

Our program:

Cal Poly’s primary quality assurance activities supporting online education are offered through our Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology (CTLT), located in the Robert E. Kennedy Library. The QA team is led by Catherine Hillman, Instructional Designer (and also current faculty in the College of Business), and the team offers robust support in the areas of teaching pedagogy, Learning Management System (Canvas), AI, content development and delivery, Accessibility, and assessment.

Campus Commitment Toward Sustainability of OCS Efforts

  • The CTLT and Provost's office continue to provide stipends for faculty completion of all OCS workshops offered throughout the year
  • The CTLT has generously assisted in sending our team to various conferences that focus on hybrid & online teaching, Artificial Intelligence, LMS, UDL and DEI.

Summary of Previous OCS  Accomplishments

This year we sent 16 faculty through the AI For Teaching & Learning workshop through the OCS. We are in the process of creating workshops that will ensure more courses having the option for online delivery in 2025-26 when the campus changes to semesters, but anticipate lower faculty involvement until that transition takes place.

Campus Goals for Online Course Services

Goal 1: Offer short workshops in 2025 to generate interest in online course delivery during Q2S conversion

We hope to offer a short series of workshops to generate interest in offering hybrid and online courses during the Semester transition, particularly as we may not have the luxury of a lot of classroom space.

Goal 2: Train faculty in use of AI in the classroom

We have created a new Faculty Learning Community for faculty to share ideas about incorporating AI into teaching and learning, as well as offering a series of workshops on AI applications.

Goal 3: Launch semester-based courses with an online option

While this goal is still ongoing, we are planning to support converting all quarter-term courses to semester courses and ask for online options for each course, pursuant to college/department approval. In doing so, we will enable many of our courses to be launched on the https://ocs.calstate.edu/ system, which is not a viable option under the current quarter system. We continue to be a strong presence in conversations throughout the campus during this transition process, and we have encouraged faculty to present change-of-modality approval options with their course proposals. This is going well.

Goal 4: Contribute to the SQuAIR research

Kelly Bennion has been a fantastic colleague in this endeavor, and we hope to bring her back for yet another year with this project!

 

Workshops and events

This past year we worked hard to incorporate AI into everything we offered to faculty, while addressing the needs of the conversion from quarters to semesters. We had a few other changes to ponder as well as the campus considered year-round operations and a change to the semester duration.

Summer ‘23
  • Blended/Hybrid workshop
  • Drop-in Course Conversion Workshops
Fall ‘23
  • Creating Accessible Course Materials
  • AI Faculty Learning Community
  • Inclusive Course Design: Implementing the UDL Guidelines
  • Creating a Blended/Hybrid Course
  • Intro to Equitable and Inclusive Teaching
  • AI Buffet Workshops
Winter ‘24
  • Creating Accessible Course Materials
  • AI Faculty Learning Community
  • Inclusive Course Design: Implementing the UDL Guidelines
  • Creating a Blended/Hybrid Course
  • Intro to Equitable and Inclusive Teaching
  • AI Buffet Workshops
Spring ‘24
  • Intro to Equitable and Inclusive Teaching
  • Creating Accessible Course Materials
  • AI Buffet Workshops

Course Peer Review and Course Certifications

Currently our course peer review & online certification process has taken a back seat to the Quarter-to-Semester and Year Round Teaching initiatives. We have adjusted our grant expectations for the coming year accordingly, but will begin some outreach in winter 2025 to faculty who may be ready to convert their courses to online delivery.

SQuAIR Research Report

This year, Kelly Bennion focused her research on faculty. Here are the notes from Kelly's 2024 presentation:

  • Benefits of online learning for students include flexibility, the ability to pause or speed up lectures, and reduced social anxiety. The greatest challenges are connecting with professors and peers, staying motivated, and technical issues like navigating different platforms.
  • Faculty benefits to online teaching include flexibility and the opportunity to diversify the student population. Challenges include lack of community, concerns about cheating, and ensuring equitable access to technology.
  • Faculty interest in teaching online courses is mixed, with about 22% definitely or probably interested and 23% definitely or probably not interested. Of those interested, most would prefer to teach only 1-2 online courses per academic year.
  • Next steps include further discussion of university identity surrounding online teaching, mitigating challenges, defining transparent policies, and providing resources and support.

Challenges

Cal Poly is facing a profound shift as we transition our course offerings from the quarter system to a semester system as well as a year-round teaching model. This year the campus was informed we may also be absorbing some of the administrative functions of CSU Maritime. During this time, we are reaching out to all faculty to encourage their proposals to include hybrid and online modalities, with much success already. When Cal Poly has completed this transition, the hope is to finally be able to post our courses on the https://www.csufullyonline.com/ site. In addition to this, Cal Poly will be focusing on the ATI initiative in 2024-25 to ensure all course materials are accessible for all students. Our other challenge is addressing the impact of AI on our teaching and learning environments.