May 5, 2008

Eight faculty earn Distance Ed Incentive Awards

The IDC's educational technologists who work with faculty within the Digital Content Development Grant program on the West Lafayette campus joined forces with the Office of Continuing Education and Conferences (OCEC) to run this Distance Ed Incentive Award program as a pilot last year. The program's goal is to encourage and support quality distance education course development.

In 2007, the IDC limited participation to those instructors who taught large enrollment courses. To be eligible for the award, faculty members attended an intensive instructional technology and distance education workshop last May. Many developed their courses during the summer and submitted their courses for review. The IDC staff evaluated the courses using criteria based on Blackboard's Exemplary Course Program rubric in the areas of course design, assessment of student learning and course content, learner support, and effective and innovative use of technology tools.

Award-Winning Instructors

The 2007 winners, their departments, and specific courses are:
* David Blakesley, English (Professional Writing and Technical Writing)
* Sugato Chakravarty, Consumer Sciences and Retailing (Personal Finance)
* George Hollich, Psychological Sciences (Child Development)
* David Klenosky, Health and Kinesiology (Research Methods)
* Roseann Lyle, Health and Kinesiology (Basic Health Studies)
* Barb Mayfield, Foods and Nutrition (Essentials of Nutrition)
* Devilyna Nichols, Mathematics (Introduction to Calculus)
* Jennifer Richardson, Curriculum  and Instruction (Educational Technology for Teaching and Learning)

Instructors who win the award benefit monetarily, but all who submit a class for consideration can profit from the experience.

According to IDC Educational Technologist Sasi Benzigar, "Anyone who attends the workshops and then submits a class to the program gets the opportunity to have their class reviewed and evaluated by our staff of educational technologists. They provide detailed comments to the faculty member about what the class does well and give suggestions for improvement."

Barb Mayfield, foods and nutrition, worked closely with OCEC Instructional Designer Tianhong Shi and a supporting team.

Mayfield says, "I would never have wanted to tackle doing this on my own!"

Participants also appreciated the program's rubric and evaluation process.

"It was good to have standards to strive for and to receive feedback," Mayfield says.

George Hollich says, "I liked the program very much, and have only good things to say about it. The instructors did a wonderful job of educating the mostly nontechnical audience on how to construct a decent online course."

Applying for the 2008 Awards

The 2008 IDC Distance Education Incentive Awards program is gearing up, and will kick off with a Maymester faculty intensive workshop, scheduled for Thursday and Friday, May 8-9.

This year, the program is open to all West Lafayette campus faculty who have developed or are interested in developing a distance education course in a learning management system.

Courses submitted to the program must be developed and delivered as distance education courses from a learning management system platform, such as Blackboard Vista. Hybrid or blended classes are not eligible. Any course that has been given the award in the three years previous to the current year is not eligible.

For more information about how to qualify to participate, the timeline for the 2008 program, and the process to apply for the May 8 workshop, see the IDC Distance Education Incentives Award Program Web site at http://www.itap.purdue.edu/tlt/idc/awards.cfm.