At UMBC, courses are created in Blackboard about four weeks before a new semester begins, providing time for faculty to transition instructional materials and assessments into a new site for students. All course shells are unavailable, however, requiring faculty to make sure students can see their courses and access content by the time classes start. Some instructors choose to open a course earlier, by days or weeks, to give students access to materials for preparation for a busy term.

While the semester might start on a specific date, here are five reasons why to consider opening your Blackboard course early.

1. Introduce Students to Class

Opening the class earlier gives you and your students time to start getting to know the course requirements, required course materials, and common questions or other logistics via a course FAQ. Orientations also allow you to find and fix unexpected issues with course content, including hidden files or broken links. 

• Clarify expectations for how your course will be facilitated, especially if it’s fully online or hybrid, and what learners will achieve on their journey (Quality Matters, 2018). 
• Provide a course tour so students can explore the structure of the course and find their way around the content and organization without the pressure of due dates. 

2. Refresh Prior Knowledge  

If your course has prerequisites or is part of a multi-part course, course materials and resources might include references to materials from prior courses or review materials. Opening your course early helps students to assess and refresh their knowledge before new content is introduced. 

• Consider Panopto videos, reading material, interactive exercises, or self-check quizzes to refresh knowledge.
• Support potential remediation with early access to materials and activities.
• Include review materials for test preparation, especially for cumulative or certification exams.

3. Complete Early Course Content

Some courses require that students complete practice problems, homework exercises, and other prerequisite activities to meet comprehensive curricular needs and learning objectives. As with refreshing prior knowledge, early content requirements may include non-assessment resources such as videos and reading materials, which can be valuable to student success (Weiss, 2019).

• Inform students about prerequisite requirements well ahead of due dates.
• Allow ample time for students to complete any scaffolded assignments and come to classes prepared to learn new material. 

4. Encourage Student & Instructor Engagement 

Opening your course early welcomes students into your virtual classroom and fosters greater interaction between you and your class. Early course access allows students to review the syllabus and complete introductory assignments, like a syllabus quiz or Quiz 0. Students can engage with course messages and announcements.  

• Connect students with each other through an introductory discussion, FAQ discussion, or VoiceThread. 
• Add your own welcome video for a personalized touch and post your instructor introduction to help build trust and community with your students (Bain, 2004).
• Send regular messages and update course announcements to establish essential instructor presence (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer, 2000). 

5. Support Student Success

Getting started early helps students start the semester on the right track with access to course materials, digital resources and textbooks. Early access to a course helps with student awareness of the course schedule and their own performance. Knowing when due dates occur and how they're doing, thanks to frequent and timely feedback, can help students become more successful in your courses.

• Create opportunities for students to practice with course tools, such as a low-stakes, zero-points quiz with Respondus Lockdown Browser. This can reduce stress ahead of required exams.
• Ensure students know they can leverage Ally’s alternative file format to support their learning preferences. This step aligns with the guiding principles of Universal Design for Learning and empowers their learning process (CAST, 2018).

By default, the starting date for all Blackboard courses are set to 2 weeks before the semester begins, allowing you to open the course any time during that period. If you’d like to open a course earlier than 2 weeks before the semester starts, you can change the date for an Original course using this FAQ, but Ultra courses will require a ticket for support.

As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options:

• PIVOT | Academic Continuity | Keep On Teaching | Student Technology Resources
• Check our extensive FAQ collection 
• What’s new in Ultra? | Known Issues 
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff

~ by Mariann Hawken, Josh Abrams, & Laura Wyatt

References

Bain, K. (2004). Chapter 6: How do they treat their students? From What the best college teachers do. Boston: Harvard Press.

CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2/3), 87-105.

Quality Matters Rubric, Sixth Edition (2018).

Weiss, H. L. (2019). Work in progress: Using videos for improvement in knowledge of prerequisite material. 126th Annual Conference & Exposition. American Society for Engineering Education.

By most accounts, UMBC’s PIVOT initiative has been considered a success in that 70 percent of all faculty participated, and 85% percent of students in PIVOT courses felt they were well organized and “flowed in a logical format.” The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) even recognized PIVOT as one of its 2021 “Effective Practice” award winners, primarily for the use of 25 peer mentors. However, due to the scale and timing of UMBC’s pandemic response to teaching and learning, it wasn’t possible to implement a key element of the Quality Matters framework that informed PIVOT: peer review of course design (not instructor delivery).

Six UMBC faculty recently accepted an invitation to pursue QM course certification through the Quality Matters Impact (QMI) initiative, which leverages the official QM course review process managed by DoIT trained and certified staff. These faculty are the first to submit an online or hybrid course for this high distinction of quality in online/hybrid course design at UMBC through a partnership with the Provost’s office.

FA2021 Cohort

• EDUC 667 - Mary Tabaa

• EHS 115 - Gary Williams

• AGNG 355 - Louise Murray

WT2022 Cohort

• CHEM 101 - Sarah Bass

• ENCH 300 - Mariajose Castellanos

• HAPP 100 - Katie Birger

The SP2022 cohort will open for submissions in January 2022. 

At this time, only fifteen courses in the University System of Maryland currently have the QM Certification Mark -- none of them are at UMBC, though more than 40 have been internally reviewed by UMBC staff using the QM rubric. 

Using the 6th edition of the QM Higher Education Rubric (pdf), a formal QM course review is designed to be a collegial process to provide helpful recommendations for continuous improvement and reinforce effective, research-based practices for online and hybrid course design. As part of this process, faculty receive feedback from certified Quality Matters peer reviewers including UMBC faculty and instructional design staff, and other online learning experts in the QM community. When a course meets QM standards following a formal review, it is eligible to display the QM Certification Mark. Participants receive a $1,000 professional development award for participating in the program. 

Why Quality Course Design Matters

As more students take online courses, UMBC’s enrollment survey found 55% of respondents felt that UMBC should prioritize the online/hybrid program development in the next five years (Huron, 2019). In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, UMBC’s own Finish Line initiative encourages students, including many from out of state, to return to college and finish their degrees (Leyshon, 2020; Rous, Mozie-Ross, Shin, & Fritz, 2021; Fritz, Hawken, Shin, 2021). Providing quality course design and instructional experiences, including active learning and authentic assessment, align with UMBC values in teaching and learning.

Grounded in effective practices and international standards for course design, the award-winning PIVOT program promoted key concepts in alignment of learning objectives, community building and engagement, and authentic assessment. Nearly 85% of PIVOT+ faculty participants said the program was helpful for their pedagogical shift to online teaching and were more likely to be open to alternative course delivery formats in Fall 2021. Additionally, research indicates students value clear instructions for getting started, descriptive criteria for course activities and assignments, and consistent navigation (Ralston-Berg, 2014). The majority of PIVOT+ students said they agreed or strongly agreed that PIVOT+ courses flowed in a logical format, reinforcing QM foundations. As such, it is important to recognize the exceptional course design from UMBC faculty through a QM review. 

For more information about the Quality Matters Impact program, please contact the QM coordinators for UMBC:

Dr. Mariann Hawken

mariannhawken@umbc.edu

Dr. Susan Biro

sbiro@umbc.edu

Online learning provided flexible opportunities when faculty and students could not come to campus last year and it created successful innovation for students, as seen by the Finish Line campaign. As UMBC invests in technology, support, and outreach for e-learning, we will talk with a program director and staff about the ways our practices have changed and what it may hold for our future. View the event recording.

The final schedule with links to join the live sessions will be posted to myUMBC by early November. All sessions will be recorded and posted to the recording archive. 

Share your thoughts!

We also invite you to participate in this year’s NDLW conversations by contributing your reflection on lessons learned or what’s next in a VoiceThread box. To share your reflection, you may use this VoiceThread link. If you have not posted to VoiceThread, please refer to the directions for next steps.

Can't make these National Distance Learning Week sessions? Bookmark this post for updates about other virtual events!

• USDLA Schedule of Events

The Online Learning Consortium announced that UMBC's Instructional Technology team has earned an Effective Practice Award for its Planning Instructional Variety for Online Teaching (PIVOT) program. Led by Dr. Mariann Hawken, representatives from the Instructional Technology team will receive the award at the OLC Accelerate conference in Washington, D.C. 

“As we return to campus life, it is undeniable that the pandemic shift to online learning and PIVOT’s support has made an impact on our faculty and students,” said Jack Suess, Vice President of IT and CIO.

The Effective Practice Awards are peer-reviewed and evaluated against OLC’s five pillars of quality in digital education:

• Learning Effectiveness: The practice demonstrates effectiveness in producing learning outcomes, which are consistent with learner needs and representative of the distinctive quality of the institution.

• Scale: The practice offers the best possible educational value to learners and supports achieving capacity enrollment. 

• Access: The practice has improved access to education by expanding opportunities and/or reducing barriers.

• Faculty Satisfaction: The practice has maintained a high level of faculty satisfaction.

• Student Satisfaction: Learners who are impacted by the practice express satisfaction with their learning experience.

“The OLC Awards program is an opportunity to showcase leadership and innovation in the field of online, blended, and digital learning,” said Dr. Jennifer Mathes, Chief Executive Officer of the Online Learning Consortium. “The awards program allows us not only to celebrate the incredible work that has been done by our community in the past year, but to look forward to what is possible in the year to come.”

Given the rapid shift to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Instructional Technology team created the PIVOT program to help faculty better prepare for a long-term commitment to virtual instruction. Leveraging an approach that targeted an individual instructor’s reflection on technology use, online pedagogies, and course content, PIVOT took faculty through a course design and online teaching journey. Since faculty engagement in planning and delivering this important training is critical to establishing peer relationships, the program included peer mentors for pedagogical and technical facilitation. “For many of our faculty members,” said Dr. John Stolle-McAllister, Associate Dean, College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, “this collaboration was a highlight of the program because they learned from each other and engaged with instructors from their own and other departments, sharing ideas and exploring tasks and projects that they would not have otherwise considered.”

PIVOT reached about 70% of UMBC’s faculty, and the majority of participants said the program was helpful for their pedagogical shift to online teaching. Faculty found their role as students in the training course and access to peer mentors to be among the most valuable aspects of the program. Students reported PIVOT-designed courses were well organized and planned. Moreover, there is a statistically significant, positive relationship between instructors completing PIVOT training and elevated course-level average values on end of semester evaluations (p<.001). Courses taught by PIVOT-trained instructors also have increased LMS interactions, which indicate improved learner engagement. “While the pandemic has been a huge challenge,” said Dr. Sarah Shinn, Associate Provost, “our PIVOT program has played a critical role in helping our faculty and students be successful.” Earlier this year, PIVOT also received the 2021 "Job Well Done" award from UMBC's Human Resources department.

Through the OLC Effective Practices program, the OLC community shares techniques, strategies and practices that have worked effectively in their institution or program. Two rounds of Effective Practices Awards are awarded annually.

A free panel discussion and celebration is scheduled for the OLC Accelerate Virtual Awards Gala on Monday September 20, 2021 at 7:45 PM as a part of the OLC Accelerate virtual program. Further opportunities to engage directly with these winners are currently being scheduled for after the conclusion of the OLC Accelerate conference when a selection of these award-winning individuals will be hosting free public webinars for the OLC community. The final schedule for these webinars will be announced in a future release.

More information about the OLC Effective Practice Awards can be found online at https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/about/olc-awards/effective-practices/