First Year Online

Professor and Student

Purdue University’s College of Science and College of Engineering saw the year of learning remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity for innovation. All first-year high enrollment courses across the two Colleges were transformed to an online format, creating a high quality learning experience and a resource for our students. ”The First Year Online” working group of faculty from Science and Engineering worked closely with Purdue Online to create a set of materials that can be used widely to facilitate online course development, providing appropriate solutions to faculty and addressing student needs.

First Year Online – Working Group – Community of Practice

We would like to acknowledge the Purdue University faculty and staff that helped create all the materials for this project as well the time they took to meet each month to give their input into this project.

College of Science

  • Biological Sciences: Donna Fekete, Dennis Minchella
  • Chemistry: Jonathan Rienstra-Kiracofe
  • Computer Science: William Crum, Randy Bond, Monica Shively
  • Mathematics: Phil Mummert, Jonathon Peterson, Joe Chen, Kenji Matsuki, Aaron Yip
  • Physics: Carina Rebello, Sanjay Rebello
  • College of Science: Peristera Paschou, Dennis Minchella, Angie Teel

College of Engineering

  • First Year Engineering: Sean Brophy, Kerrie Douglas, Jill Folkerts, Isabel Jinenez-Useche, Tamara Moore, Eric Nauman, Larry Nies, William Oakes, Matthew Ohland, Senay Purzer, Carla Zoltowski
  • College of Engineering: Alina Alexeenko, Nina Robinson

Purdue Online / TLT

  • Tim Lombardo, Sarah Crago, Cody Connor, Jason Fish, Donna Cumberland

First Year Online Faculty Guidebook

The Faculty handbook was created through the interdisciplinary collaboration of the College of Engineering and College of Science faculty and leaders. The goal was to present faculty with best practices in online teaching and learning and technical advice to create high-end learning environments for their students. The handbook is divided into five sections:

  1. Program-Wide Considerations
  2. Instructional Technology
  3. Best Practices for Virtual Labs
  4. Best Practices for Online Interactions
  5. Assessment Best Practices

Click this link to download the First Year Online Faculty Guidebook

First Year Online Course Development Checklist

Along with the handbook, a customized course development checklist was created meant to allow faculty to scan their courses for potential needs for revision. This checklist incorporates all of Purdue Online’s QM-Correlated CDD Rubric while expanding it and arranging it based on Student – Content Interactions, Student – Student Interactions, and Student – Instructor Interactions.

Click this link to download the First Year Online Course Development Checklist

Brightspace Template

The use of this template will help create a more harmonized look and feel across the First Year Online Engineering and Science courses, helping students navigate with ease as they switch from one course to the other. This template allows for flexibility in how the instructor teaches, weeks or modules while trying to achieve the goal of having students spend less time trying to learn how to navigate between courses and promotes more time learning.

Click this link to download the First Year Online Brightspace Template (Brightspace Package Format)

First Year Online Template and Checklist Workshop and Training Materials

On June 8th, 2021 from 9:00 am – 10:00 am Timothy Lombardo from Purdue Online hosted an online workshop through Zoom to demonstrate how to use the First Year Online Brightspace template and the materials that were developed. The session was recorded for those that could not attend and a link will be made available afterwards on this website. 

Click here to go to the First Year Online Template and Checklist Workshop in Mediaspace.