2023-2024 CSUSB Quality Online Teaching and Learning ePortfolio

CSUSB's efforts this year focused continuing efforts to expand our quality online course offerings.

Goal 1: Build on momentum for quality online learning and increase the number of courses designed according to QLT or QM principles by 10% of total online courses offered in 2024-2025. Goal 1 activities will include professional development in quality online teaching and learning through our Summer, Fall and Spring Quality Online Teaching Programs in which faculty take QLT1 (“Intro”) or QLT3 (“Advanced”) and then commit to develop and teach a quality online course in 2024-2025 certified according to the QLT core 24 principles. Also, participants will work with assigned instructional designers to meet milestones at specified dates so that steady progress is made toward course completion by 8/15/24 (Fall courses) or 12/31/24 (Spring courses). 

Goal 2: Continue to provide faculty with professional development and support to enhance their effective use of Canvas for teaching. Goal 2 activities will include a revised self-guided “Essentials of Teaching with Canvas” course and multi-workshop certificate series on Teaching with Technology; and the continued extensive professional development of instructional design staff and faculty in using Canvas for quality online teaching.

Goal 3: Increase the number of certified QLT courses. Goal 3 activities will include outreach to and recruitment of faculty who have completed and taught a quality online course through our professional development programs.

Online Course Services Lead(s)

• Bradford Owen, AVP for Faculty Development and Chief Academic Technologies Officer
• Craig Seal, SQuAIR Fellow 

Supporting Campus Partners

• The Division of Academic Affairs, led by Provost Rafik Mohamed
• The Faculty Center for Excellence, including six instructional designers and an LMS administrator
• The John M. Pfau Library

Campus Commitment Toward Sustainability of OCS Efforts

• In the post-pandemic context, Academic Affairs is deeply committed to developing quality online teaching and learning at CSUSB. Over the last four years, they have committed more than $1,000,000 in stipend funding of faculty professional development in quality online teaching.

Summary of Previous OCS  Accomplishments

In 2022-2023, CSUSB completed the following trainings:

• Quality Online Teaching Programs 
  • 55 faculty completed Office of the Chancellor QLT courses and are working with our instructional designers to produce a quality asynchronous online course which meets the QLT core-24 standards to be offered in the 2023-2024 academic year
  • 70 faculty are taking QLT courses and will develop a quality asynchronous course for teaching in 2024-2025
• Next Generation Smart Classroom Cosynchronous Teaching Program
  • Another 40 faculty completed on-site training in cosynchronous teaching, as well as two self-guided courses, "Essentials of Teaching with Canvas" and "Best Practices in Cosynchronous Teaching." This program provides faculty the skills to successfully integrate students attending remotely into their in-person classes.

In 2023-2024, CSUSB completed the following trainings:

• Quality Online Teaching Programs 
  • As we complete this four-year iteration of our Quality Online Teaching Program, a total of 137 faculty have completed quality asynchronous courses which met all of the QLT Core 24 rubric standards as internally certified by our instructional designers, after first completing either the Introduction or Advanced QLT course through the CSU Office of the Chancellor online course services.

Course Peer Review and Course Certifications

We continue to develop a workflow and incentive system so that quality online courses developed in our Quality Online Teaching Programs which fulfill the QLT "Core 24" objectives are moved forward for full QLT certification. The logic is that the faculty in these programs have already done at least half the work needed for certification, and that going the full distance is within their grasp.

Student Online Quality Assurance Impact Research 

Our SQuAIR Fellow Dr. Craig Seal performed study on student determination of instructional mode in four sections of undergraduate Human Resources Management courses. Among his interesting findings were an almost universal preference for HyFlex over the in-person, online synchronous, and online asynchronous modes alone; and great disparity between students' intention to attend in person and actual attendance.   

Accessibility/UDL Efforts

• We have a new full-time Faculty Inclusion Fellow for Disability, Difference, and Accommodation who serves as a liaison between the faculty and our Office of Services to Students with Disabilities. 
• Our Accessible Technology Services team provides digital content remediation to faculty by request, as well as assistive technology in our dedicated lab
• Our Office of Services to Students with Disabilities provides OCR digitization of books to faculty as well as facilitating accommodations in particular classes for registered students with disabilities
• Our Canvas LMS instance includes Ally and we promote its use through workshops and individual support from instructional designers

Next Steps for OCS Efforts 

• Under new budget constraints and the exhaustion of HEERF funds, we are re-designing our Quality Online Teaching Program to target alumnae of "Introduction to Teaching Online Using QLT" (Q1); participants must take "Advanced QLT Course in Teaching Online" (Q3) and then design or re-design a course using the QLT Core 24 rubric. 
• We have re-vamped our non-credit self-guided student course in best practices in online learning, "Learning at a Distance" and plan to require it of all incoming students starting in Fall 2024
• We plan to develop a badging system for classes which have been developed in our quality online teaching programs or are QLT or QM certified.