University of Michigan-Flint

Application Due Date:  5 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012

The Office of Extended Learning is launching a course redesign project to enable up to 15 faculty to learn and implement the latest “best practices” in their online and mixed-mode courses.  OEL will award $400 per credit, excluding labs and independent study courses, for course redesign.

The intent of the project is to:

1. Help faculty improve the overall quality of online learning and teaching in their courses.
2. Help faculty establish a presence in their courses.
3. Help faculty get the most out of the time they invest in their course development.

The project will run February through August 2012, as needed, until all instructors within the cohort have completed their courses.

The project will begin with six group information/training sessions facilitated by an OEL instructional designer; in addition, instructional designers will be assigned to each faculty member to provide one-on-one consultation.

The course redesign should demonstrate a substantial re-thinking of the course and are expected to move beyond the revision that faculty normally do to keep their courses current.  Faculty will apply generally accepted principles of instructional design, including:

1. Refinement of competencies, course objectives or learning outcomes, lessons and assessments tied to the learning outcomes and lessons.
2. Improvements in delivery of material, especially in the use of audio and video.
3. Development of opportunities for instructor presence and frequent teacher-student interaction.
4. Improvements in course navigation and appearance.

All faculty, including LEO faculty, are eligible to participate.  Each application must be supported by the applicant’s chair and be endorsed by the appropriate dean or director.  Faculty who have received a development stipend for the same course within the last two years are not eligible.  Stipends will not be awarded for courses for which other monies have been approved by the Thompson Center for Learning and Teaching.  Two or more faculty working collaboratively may apply jointly and divide payment between/among the participants.

The faculty member will notify his/her assigned instructional designer, who will review the course with the OEL director.  When the course has been approved, one-third of the stipend payment will be processed immediately and the remainder when the course is next offered.

To receive compensation, the instructor must have incorporated in his/her course:

1. Syllabus outlining the course and assignment schedule in detail.
2. Evidence of frequent and regular interaction planned between students, such as discussion threads and group projects, and between faculty and students.
3. Instructor contact information prominently placed in the correlating course area.
4. “Getting started” announcement with details on how to proceed.
5. Weekly units (folders) with consistent navigation and appearance.
6. Course content must include:
   1. Learning objectives/learning outcomes stated at the beginning of each unit.
   2. Materials, activities, assignments and assessments tied to the learning objectives/outcomes.
   3. Grading rubrics for assignments.
   4. Lecture material with audio or audiovideo accompaniment featuring the instructor in at least half of the weekly units.  This may include computer-assisted presentations such as narrated PowerPoint files, audio files, screencasts, Flash or other video files, videotaped lectures, or synchronous sessions via Elluminate or Blackboard conferencing technology.  PowerPoint files developed as bulleted outlines must include full narration or full sentences if the context of the information is not complete; this includes files created by textbook publishers.  

NOTE:  Course cartridges are good resources, especially for multimedia materials, but courses must also include original faculty-developed material to qualify for stipends.

OEL encourages faculty to conduct a self-evaluation of the course using the MCCVLC rubric provided in the Intensive Course Development training and also available at www.umflint.edu/oel/Forms/MCCVLC_Rubric.docx.  The rubric was created by a task force of the Michigan Community College Virtual Learning Collaborative based on generally accepted instructional principles and related documents from The American Council on Education, The Higher Education Program and Policy Council of the American Federation of Teachers, The North Central Association Higher Learning Commission, and American Association of Higher Education.

Application form