Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: A Traditional Institution Evolves

Helping faculty move curriculum from traditional classroom delivery to a blended, semi-synchronous model including online group seminars can be a real challenge. Motivation and training of the instructors was only part of the problem. Ensuring that the e-Learning department was not overloaded was another, and not undermining the other offerings also contributed to the difficulty. Here's how the problem was solved!

Working with subject matter experts has always presented unique challenges. This is especially true when, as in the situation I will relate, the subject matter experts are faculty members of the institution with years of experience working and training in their areas of expertise.

As you will see, we were able to take an existing curriculum and enhance it with instructor-led courses online. In these courses, the faculty would do more than simply provide content and function as typical subject matter experts; they would participate in the design and implementation of new courses.

With this in mind, the e-Learning team anticipated an entirely new set of challenges, which we addressed with a step-by-step process. The first step was to articulate for the faculty the unique qualities of online training, and what they could expect when developing an online course. The final result included training materials for presentation in a three-hour session with a workbook of items to take away.

Here’s how we did it.

The situation

The Poynter Institute, a well-respected school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Florida, has offered on-the-ground training for professional journalists, educators, and students for more than 30 years. The changing economic conditions, combined with the shifting technology landscape that journalists face, especially those in newspapers and broadcast stations, have had a significant impact on enrollment in the continuing education seminars. News organizations have reduced, if not eliminated, budgets for training and travel, and the workload for individuals who survived the layoffs has increased. This has created a greater need for training, yet less opportunity to get out of the office and travel.

The current primary training format, and the foundation of much of the institute’s success, is based on live, in-person seminars. These typically last from three to five days, and involve intense interaction among participants with eight- to ten-hour days. The result is a transformative experience for everyone involved, and a close bond that extends well beyond the short period of the seminar. Participants must submit an application; the faculty selects participants based on appropriate fit for the subject. The Institute typically limits groups to 12 to 16 participants from around the world. The cost for these seminars averages approximately $1,000, not including travel and hotel expenses.

The institute also has an e-Learning department called News University (www.newsu.org). NewsU is a free e-Learning site for professionals, educators, students, and members of the public who are interested in media and journalism training. NewsU has more than 100,000 registered users accessing more than 125 training modules. It is funded in part by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Most courses available through News University are tightly focused, self-directed modules, with material that can be covered in small blocks of time without an instructor. A typical self-directed course takes two to three hours to complete.

The solution

With an e-Learning department already in place, it seemed natural for us to expand some of the onsite, instructor-led training, and develop new online, semi-synchronous curricula inspired by our on-the-ground offerings. Doing so would expand the potential audience for the courses by eliminating travel restrictions and reducing overall costs to the participants. It would also allow participants to continue to work throughout the period of the course.

NewsU has already produced several online group seminars, and some courses have run for multiple sessions. The success and positive feedback of these seminars has made it a reasonable solution for the current situation.

By expanding our online seminar offerings, we would continue to serve a global audience, and participation would still be limited to selected applicants. The group sizes would be slightly larger than a traditional onsite seminar, allowing for up to 25 participants. The cost to participants would be significantly lower, at $300 to $400 per course, and would eliminate their need for travel and accommodations. The course generally would run for a period of four weeks rather than five days, allowing for shorter synchronous activities and more asynchronous work to be done when it was convenient for the participant. A typical time commitment for participants would be 4-6 hours a week.

This idea presented several significant challenges:

1. Motivation of faculty members to participate in this new approach.
2. Initial concerns by the institute on how to maintain the standard of high-quality training for which it is known, and losing the ability to control the transformative experience.
3. Design and implementation of a new teaching strategy that does not compete with or undermine the value of existing offerings.
4. Ability to standardize the training platform to minimize the increased production for the e-Learning department.

Our approach was to articulate the qualities of online training and help the faculty understand the process and tools of teaching online.

One of the strengths of the existing onsite training provided by the faculty is the experience of the seminar participants. Each seminar is more than just teaching; it is a transformative process in which relationships are created, habits are changed, and learning occurs. This is a critical factor to the faculty, and one of the key differentiators between the institute and other training providers in the industry.

The goal of our e-Learning is not to replace the live training experience. The goal is to provide another type of experience – extending a positive learning outcome to an audience that would otherwise not have the opportunity.

To explain this new approach and how the experience would differ, we first identified the multiple methods of training delivery currently employed by the institute (see Table 1) in its onsite training, the NewsU platform, and the Web site of The Poynter Institute. We also identified the sizes of groups for the different types, the cost for participants associated with each, the amount of time required of the participants, and the flexibility.

 

 

By demonstrating the reach of online training, we would be able to explain to the faculty the potential for an expanded audience – participants who would otherwise not be able to receive this training.

We also identified the technologies that could be used in an online course and how they have been utilized in the past. This included readings, both online and in print, interactive activities developed specifically for the course, Podcasts, Webinars, and one-on-one conversations with the instructor (which we call coaching sessions). It would be essential for faculty members to see how they could interact with the participants in groups or individually. Using the technology to aid coaching of the individual would be a critical point in the acceptance of the new approach.

Another aspect faculty members enjoy about a traditional seminar is the ability to modify a seminar “on the fly” based on participant reactions and the chemistry in the room. While online learning requires more planning and less improvisation, it would still be possible to monitor the learning of the participants via a variety of methods in the course. These would be the asynchronous tasks of discussion forums, posting assignments, and e-mail communications or the synchronous tasks of the one-on-one coaching methods and chat sessions. These are designed to guide the participants on their very specific and individual needs, as well as to provide some supplemental materials such as additional readings or Web sites for review.

The e-Learning department at the institute has a staff of four producers, one editor, and one graphic designer. To guide faculty through the process of creating courses, we created several planning documents. These worksheets would serve as pre-qualifiers for a course, and demonstrate interest from the faculty member to commit to the work involved. The worksheets also can be used by outside subject matter experts, so the investment in developing the worksheets was money well spent.

The first worksheet is based on a series of questions we ask when starting the development of any online course. These questions include:

• What is the goal of the course?
• Who are the primary and secondary audiences?
• Why do you believe there is a need for this course?
• Does the audience have any specific professional skills that will aid or inhibit them in this material?
• Where are the most significant gaps in knowledge for the intended audience?
• What are common mistakes made by novices?
• Will this course be sustainable over a long period of time, and be able to run again?

After answering these questions, the producer and the faculty member are able to have a focused conversation about learning goals and objectives and craft a structured plan for the course.

The second worksheet is a blank lesson plan. This is basically a blank, four week calendar. Although the concept is simple, it has many uses. For this audience, it can guide faculty in transforming a five-day, in-person seminar to a multi-week semi-synchronous course online. The resulting lesson plan can also be used in materials when promoting the course, so that potential applicants will be able to anticipate the demands on their time. A third benefit is that, when combined with the learning objectives and course goals, a well-defined lesson plan can help inform solid course navigation.

In anticipation of creating a growing online curriculum, we developed a template for these online seminars. Knowing that most courses would follow a four-week format allowed us to develop a back-end architecture that eliminated some of the repetitive production tasks of each course. As part of that pre-defined architecture, we implemented a simple content management system that would enable the faculty to add and edit the content in the course. By moving the responsibility of content management from the e-Learning producer to the faculty member, we significantly decreased the amount of time necessary for programming and developing content.

The next step was to present all these materials in a training session to the faculty. For our scheduled three-hour workshop, we developed a workbook and some small-group activities. The workbook worked well for a few reasons:

• It functioned as a guide for the very tight timeframe.
• It was a “take-away” for the faculty. We wanted to provide them with a reference and tool they could use when they were ready to begin developing an online course.
• It addressed many questions about moving their teaching approach from a live seminar setting into a semi-synchronous setting.
• The worksheets included in the workbook made the process less foreign and intimidating.

We created the following sections in the workbook to address specific issues:

• Forms of Training: These are the types of training currently offered by the institute, and how they each serve a unique audience and need (see Table 1).
• Technology: These are the types of technology tools available for implementation in an online course, and how they have been used in the past.
• Roles: This defines who is involved in developing an online course, and exactly what each person’s responsibility is. This helped faculty identify what work they would do, and how the e-Learning team would collaborate with them in the course development process.
• Vocabulary: Moving into a technical field can bring with it a lot of jargon that can be alienating.
• Frequently asked questions: By addressing many of their questions up front and in the workbook, we were able to demystify much of the process.
• Course planning tools: Within the workbook, we provided a few different worksheets to guide faculty thinking for an online course. These include the questions about course goal and audience as well as the blank lesson plan.

We had the benefit of knowing our audience before beginning the training session, so we could tailor the session. With the workbook as our guide, we created some group activities in which they would use the course planning tools to start thinking about an online seminar they might like to lead.

We opened our training session with an overview about the forms of training, the technology we commonly use, and the roles of the people involved in developing such a course. We then broke the group of approximately 25 participants in small groups to brainstorm ideas for what they’d like to teach in an online setting. Each Poynter faculty member has a specific role in the institute for a variety of disciplines, so it was not difficult to tap into their body of work or passion for the subject. The resulting list of course ideas was impressive.

Each small group reported back to the entire room so everyone’s ideas were shared. Then we walked the group through the course development process. Once we talked about the process, we asked each small group to choose one course idea, use the course planning tools from the workbook, and complete a questionnaire and a sample lesson plan. The purpose was not to commit anything to a specific course, but to demonstrate how the process works and to help the faculty begin thinking about the materials in a way that varied from their experience with traditional seminars.

The resulting training session was enthusiastic and led to many proposals from faculty for new courses.

The follow-up

The e-Learning team selected three potential courses for further development after the training session. The team also scheduled a group meeting to discuss and identify opportunities to develop with the new strategy. The participants in the group included the three faculty members proposing the courses, and the team from the e-Learning department. Prior to the meeting, each faculty member completed the preliminary questionnaire and submitted it to the producers. This allowed everyone to start the meeting with some base of information, and to make more efficient use of the time.

The goal of the meeting was to brainstorm possibilities for course audience, the course structure, and the timeframe in which the course could be developed. Using the workbook as a guide, the group collaborated on learning objectives and lesson plans to come up with a simple course structure. This allowed everyone to see the feasibility in the proposed courses, and decide what the most effective next steps might be.

Epilogue

Two of the three proposed courses have enough information and definition to be added to the production schedule. We anticipate beginning design within two months of this writing, with launch dates of early 2010.

There is an interesting side note, as well. One of the main producers involved in leading the training session and the followup meeting participated via Skype™ from Central America. This was a coincidence in scheduling, but worked well to prove the point that technology can certainly enable new means of communication, and physical location does not always have to be a deterrent to training.

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