2023-24 — Stanislaus— Supporting and Exploring Quality Online Teaching and Learning

Proposal Summary:  As increasing numbers of departments and faculty are consistently and intentionally offering courses in online and hybrid formats, our proposed project for 2023-24 included several components. First, we desired to provide a year-long Quality Online and Hybrid Teaching and Learning Faculty Learning Community to support the development and facilitation of inclusive online and hybrid courses, and to prepare them for self-review using the QLT Rubric. We also wanted to provide opportunities for their course to be peer reviewed by Stan State faculty who have obtained the QLT Reviewer certification - building the skills of the peer reviewers while providing feedback to instructors. Finally, we engaged in a SQuAIR project to learn more about faculty experiences with online/hybrid teaching faculty development opportunities, and with design and facilitation of courses that draws upon what they learned through these experiences. 

Campus Goals for Online Course Services

In our 2022-23 proposal we especially focused on the following four goals:

• Goal 7: Provide campus support for faculty efforts to design and deliver quality online and hybrid courses through professional development and support services. Through our FLC we have prepared 7 new faculty to engage in course reviews, and will complete informal reviews of at least 7 courses. Once the informal reviews are completed, we will submit four courses for formal review.
• Goal 8: Widely disseminate techniques, experiences, and outcomes from the various campus projects across the CSU through effective communications. After the end of the grant period, we intend to create a website identifying Stan State faculty trained and certified as informal and/or formal course reviewers, along with a description of our local procedures for supporting informal and formal course reviews. This work will be addressed in Summer 2023.
• Goal 9: Create a network of faculty, staff, and administrators informed of the various factors, tools, and resources that enable effective online teaching and learning. Seven FLC members and 3 team leaders are engaging in formal and informal course reviews using the 3rd edition of the QLT rubric. We have been developing a strategy for on-going informal local reviews and participation in CSU-facilitated formal reviews. Working in collaboration with staff and administrators from the Office of Academic Technology (OAT) we will have a more comprehensive ability to assist faculty in course development, facilitation, and review. 
• Goal 3: Determine the impact of professional development and course certification on teaching performance and student success in CSU online and hybrid courses. We are in our second year of SQUAIR data collection and analysis, building our process for engaging in this research as we’re also learning from the findings of the studies in progress.

Online Course Services Lead(s)

• Betsy Eudey, Professor of Gender Studies; COIL Coordinator
• Karen Zandarski, Instructor of English

Supporting Campus Partners

• Glenn Pillsbury, Instructional Designer, Office of Academic Technology
• Kris Roney, AVP of Faculty Affairs
• Office of Faculty Affairs Administrative Staff

Campus Commitment Toward Sustainability of OCS Efforts

The 2023-24 revision to the Stan State Online and Technology- Mediated Courses and Programs Policy (AA/09/AS/23/ATLC) affirms that “ Instructors teaching online and hybrid courses should successfully complete training (such as FCETL workshop(s) or similar professional development activity) or demonstrate proficiency in teaching online or hybrid courses.” And further indicates, “A rich environment of technologies, consultation, training, and pedagogical support shall be provided for faculty by the combined efforts of the academic departments, college dean’s offices, Office of Academic Technology, the Office of Information Technology, the University Library, and the Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.”

In March 2024 Academic Affairs at Stan State finalized a new Strategic Plan. Among the commitments and priorities indicated in the plan, are the following that support elements of our OCS efforts:

• 1.e Ensure schedule, term length, and course modality address the diversity of student and faculty needs, student success, and pedagogical appropriateness.
• 1.g Increase funding for student success and curricular transformation projects aimed at addressing curricular inclusion, increasing retention and persistence, and eliminating equity gaps.
• 2.a Support faculty development to explore teaching techniques and technologies that enhance pedagogy that support responsiveness and adaptability to change.
• 2.c Ensure that the organizational structure, strategy, and budget of the Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (FCETL) appropriately supports the needs of faculty in pedagogical development as well as the integration of academic technology.
• 3.a Expand efforts to evaluate, enhance, and expand our commitment to DEISJ throughout the curriculum.

Summary of Previous OCS  Accomplishments

Stanislaus State has been an active participant in the QLT/QA program for over a decade and we have worked strenuously to offer faculty development opportunities for online/hybrid teaching and learning. We have accomplished this through several FLCs funded over the years with the OCS/QA grants, helping us expand the numbers of faculty better prepared to engage in online/hybrid teaching. We have several faculty who have completed the QLT1, QLT2 and QLT3 courses in addition to the campus-based FLCs. Stan State Liberal Studies Professor and FLC facilitator Daniel Soodjinda developed and implemented the Anti-Racism Quality Learning and Teaching (AR-QLT) Course Evaluation Instrument, a tool that is now being utilized at several CSU campuses. In 2023-23 we focused on building infrastructure and institutional processes for course reviews and certifications, along with the capacity to implement this process by formally trained course reviewers.

Stan State’s history with QLT includes the following:

• 2012/13 - expanded infrastructure, increased awareness, and designed and facilitated a faculty learning community (FLC) to promote quality online learning and teaching.
• 2013/14 - continued to develop the FLC model to train faculty in two cohorts. The campus increased awareness by including additional unofficial participants in our trainings.
• 2014/15 & 2015/16 - strengthened the QLT-FLC’s goals in course development and revision around QLT objectives and trained cohorts of QLT Peer Mentors to perform peer-evaluations.
• 2016/17 - 2019/20 developed a more structured timeline for QLT-FLC and QLT-M participants; incorporated monthly virtual meetings, promoting participant familiarity with Zoom technology and providing ongoing support for course development and FLC cohesiveness. 
• 2020/2021 added AR-QLT Course Evaluation Instrument and participant trainings
• 2021/2022 implemented a year-long FLC using the AR-QLT Course Evaluation Rubric.
• 2022/23 development of Stan State online/hybrid course review infrastructure including faculty preparation to perform reviews.
• 2023/24 - preparation of new faculty to teach in online and hybrid formats, and engagement of Stan State faculty as peer reviewers.

Dissemination of OCS Efforts— Conferences 

QLT Standards Implementation and Impact on Faculty - Video (7:06 mins.) Slides CSU Stanislaus SQuAIR Research Presentation, Virtual 6/6/24 Zandarski, K.

Training Completions

Through April 2024, Stan State faculty and staff have completed a total of 693 QLT and QM courses offered through the Chancellor's Office, with an additional 13 new completions thru June 16, 2024. Course completions in 2023-24 includes the following:

Course Peer Review and Course Certifications

Via the Quality Learning and Teaching Faculty Learning Community, nine faculty received an informal peer review by a Stan State faculty member who has received QLT Peer Reviewer Certification. In addition, Glenn Pillsbury, Instructional Designer is available to provide informal full or partial course reviews upon request. 

5 Stan State courses have received formal Certification, but no new courses were submitted for certification in 2023-24.

Student Online Quality Assurance Impact Research 

The 2023-24 Research Plan, enacted by Dr Karen Zandarski, to gather data showing what standards faculty implement from the QLT rubric and how that impacts:

• Their perception of student learning
• The perceived workload of teaching online
• The perceived cognitive labor of teaching online

The study addressed the research question: What specific parts of the QLT rubric do faculty implement after participating in QLT trainings and how do those changes impact their perception of
student learning and instructor workload?

The six faculty who were interviewed had completed multiple online teaching works, faculty learning communities, and courses via the Chancellor's Office and ACUE. They found that the multiple trainings reinforced each other. 

Among the findings were that: 

• the QLT Rubric is a valuable planning and self-check tool
• faculty felt that adherence to the rubric freed up time in the semester to focus on other tasks as opposed to student questions or clarifying concepts.
• Soliticing student feedback led to circular improvements.

Development of Campus Online Course Services Resources

During the 2023-24 the revised Online and Technology- Mediated Courses and Programs Policy (AA/09/AS/23/ATLC) includes more guidelines for how departments/programs identify courses for particular instructional modalities, expectations for faculty preparation for online and hybrid instruction, and faculty development and instructional supports for online/hybrid instruction.

OAT Updates is a biweekly newsletter sent to all faculty, offering tech tips, links to tutorials, and information about upcoming workshops and trainings.

Accessibility/UDL Efforts

• Ally is automatically activated in all courses in the Canvas LMS at Stan State. This allows all students to access print content in a variety of formats, and for all faculty to better understand and address accessibility issues in course design.
• Faculty can obtain support from OAT to assist them in learning how to create/post content that is accessible, and can have content converted into accessible formats for them through submission of an accessibility work request.
• UDL topics are incorporated into the online and hybrid teaching workshops offered by OAT and via the OCS grant-funded FLC.

Next Steps for OCS Efforts 

• We intend to increase faculty preparation as online/hybrid instructors and course reviewers via a year-long FLC.
• We will offer Stan State-only enrollment in the Introduction to QLT and QLT Reviewer courses, open to all faculty, and required for faculty participating in the year-long FLC.
• SQuAIR researcher engagement with Institutional Effectivenes and Analytics staff to identify and analyze data related to online and hybrid courses. We will plan for, and potentially engage in, new data collection from faculty and/or students.
• We will continue to encourage faculty to participate in the OCS course offerings offered via the Chancellor's Office.