by Michaella Thornton, Assistant Director for Instructional Design
Penn State University’s “Faculty Self-Assessment: Preparing for Online Teaching” and “Web Learning @ Penn State”
developed by the Faculty Engagement subcommittee of Penn State’s Online Coordinating Council
Links: https://weblearning.psu.edu/FacultySelfAssessment/ AND http://weblearning.psu.edu/resources
The summertime is a great time to reflect on the course design process, especially if you are preparing to teach an online or blended course. If you are at that particular point in your teaching, I highly recommend taking Penn State University’s “Faculty Self-Assessment: Preparing for Online Teaching” and checking out the resources for “Web Learning @ Penn State,”; while this page contains some resources only for PSU faculty, the page also contains open links to an e-learning glossary and several journal and research articles centered on online teaching and learning.
The quick “Preparing for Online Teaching” self-assessment takes no more than 5 minutes and asks respondents to assess themselves on the following four categories: organization and time management; communicating online; teaching and online experience; and technical skills. After you’re done taking the self-assessment, you receive an emailed report with detailed, evidence-based, and confidential feedback on areas of strength and development that you may want to consider before teaching online.
Quest Garden
Link: http://questgarden.com/
This link came to us from a faculty member who designed a first-time WebQuest this summer. If you’re interested in creating an inquiry-based online lesson, Quest Garden gives you a free 30-day trial subscription to experiment with the pedagogical format and technical set-up of a WebQuest and is of note because you can also embed other media, such as images, video, and Google Docs, into the process.
Iowa State University’s “A Model of Learning Objectives”
Link: http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/RevisedBlooms1.html
Instructional Designer, Sandy Gambill previewed a super helpful learning objectives builder in The Notebook in October 2012 [Radio James Objective Builder was gone for a brief blip — hosted no more by James Basore, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, but then re-hosted by Arizona State University (ASU) Online in January]. Iowa State’s interactive model, created by Rex Heer of Iowa State’s Center for Excellence in Learning & Teaching, is a great follow-up to the Radio James Objective Builder resource highlighted earlier. What makes this interactive model appealing is that it helps folks see how learning objectives may be crafted to meet the needs of the cognitive process and knowledge dimensions.
The Notebook 