Effective Design for Online Teaching and Learning

Effective Design for Online Teaching and Learning (EDO) will give you conceptual and technical tools to help you link your online teaching to your learning goals for students, and make your online course more engaging. We will introduce you to research and practice around online teaching and course design through both synchronous sessions and asynchronous work you can complete to prepare you for the synchronous work: videos and readings; discussion sections where you can raise the questions most important to you; workshop sessions with course faculty; small group work to produce plans and materials for your own online teaching. We are hoping this combination of guidance and independent choice will serve as a model for your own thinking about course design.

Why EDO?

After more than a year of adapting our teaching to the pandemic, mostly through online platforms, or using hybrid approaches to maintain safety in schools and communities, EDO offers an opportunity for teachers from different contexts and different levels to pause and reflect on what effective teaching and learning online consists of. Online teaching follows the same principals as f2f teaching ā€“ you choose the approach that best suits your goals.

Now that teachers around the world have had an opportunity to experiment with online teaching, we think it can be part of their toolbox for expanding learning in future, even as part of their regular courses, extending learning beyond the classroom setting.

We instructors are united in valuing interactive experiences and learning across contexts. Unlike many other online courses, where students work asynchronously and only interact with other students on discussion boards, we believe you will learn better if you have the opportunity to bring the concerns from your contexts to your peers and the course instructors. In this way, we all learn from each other.

Participants will work in small groups to share and adapt existing lesson plans in order to have concrete plans to try over the next academic year. We hope you will eventually share with us what you will have taken away from this experience into your classrooms.

Why have Chinese as the target language? MSUā€™s Office of International Studies in Education has developed important connections with educators from PK to doctoral studies, in China and in the surrounding Chinese-speaking countries. We host many groups from these countries here, and attract many Chinese-speaking students. We are introducing this approach of teaching a course in both English and one other world language, in order to approach the material at a higher level. Non-English speakers often are challenged approaching PD in English. By offering bilingual materials and having weekly discussion sections with a Chinese-speaking instructor, we make sure that all participants get the full benefit of MSU expertise.

Program Overview

This three-week professional development course will address several topics related to online teaching and learning:

  • Online course design and technology tools
  • Pedagogical frameworks in online teaching
  • Disciplinary learning and subject-specific course design
  • Assessment, evaluation, and quality assurance

By the end of the course, you will complete an annotated outline of a series of lessons you would normally teach face to face, but revised for an online platform.

Course Calendar

Week 1

Engaging with contentIntroduction to course: video. Submit introduction and picture to groupCourse design principles and frameworks: video and websites/short readingIntroduction to student assessment: video and short readingDiscussion boards: response to prompts about content; begin applying to own work. Send questions to FAQ discussion board.
Discussion SectionTeaching Assistant monitors discussion boards and FAQ board and plans discussion section with smaller groups. After discussion section, shares main issues raised with faculty.
Synchronous session with facultyLecture: Frameworks and design principles review Discussions: Participants’ prior experiences in teaching/designing online courses. Applying design principles and frameworks with participantsā€™ background. Introduction to final projects; breakout groups discuss possible target lessons for revision
Follow-up, and group work on projectsAssignment: By Friday, post one-paragraph description of intended project to guide small group placementIntroduce to each other on small group discussion board: What problems are likely in putting your lessons online? What in this weekā€™s content helps you think through that?

Week 2

Engaging with contentIntegrating technology into lessons so they meet your learning targets: video and short readingGuided exploration of websites for new technology tools. Discussion board: report on exploration and link concepts from intro to toolsIntroduction to Maker Movement and offline project to complete: video, directions for making kite. Send any questions to the FAQ discussion board.
Discussion SectionTeaching Assistant monitors discussion boards and FAQ board and plans discussion section with smaller groups. After discussion section, shares main issues raised with faculty.
Synchronous session with facultyMaker Movement and use of hands-on tech as expansion of ideas introduced this week; report on your kite-making experience.Guided search for possible tools, given learning targets
Follow-up, and group work on projectsDiscussion Board: Based on guided exploration of tools, explain how you would integrate one of the new tools into your lesson sequence.Report in small groups: what assessment methods are you using?

Week 3

Engaging with contentIntroduction to disciplinary learning and course design: short videoVideo tour of four classes in different subject areas (K-12) with commentary by disciplinary expertsTools for student and self-assessment. video and links to websites.Discussion board: what are the particular issues in putting courses in your subject area online? Discuss both content delivery and assessment. Send any questions to FAQ board.
Discussion SectionTeaching Assistant monitors discussion boards and FAQ board and plans discussion section with smaller groups. After discussion section, shares main issues raised with faculty.
Synchronous session with facultyLive panel of teachers and university faculty to discuss video shown this week, elaborate on issues and answer questionsTime to meet synchronously in small groups to discuss final projects
Complete group work on projectsPost almost-completed draft to small group discussion board by FridayRead and respond to colleaguesā€™ work by SundayFinal draft due by Tuesday

Highlights

For more information, view our Effective Design for Online Teaching and Learning for the International Educator Brochure.

Registration

Registration Link

You will be directed to a payment website after submitting your registration form. Please complete the payment process. 

Cost and Refund

Special inaugural price: $575/participant

All requests for cancellations and refunds must be submitted in writing to the Global Engagement Education office by email edoise@msu.edu.

  • Full Refund: Cancellation on or before July 5, 2021 EST
  • 50% Refund: Cancellation between July 6, 2021 and July 18, 2021 EST
  • No Refund: Cancellation on or after July 19, 2021 EST 

Refunds WILL NOT be issued after the posted cancellation dates for any reason including early withdrawal due to absences, illness, participant connectivity issue, or unforeseeable events not within the control of the Global Engagement Education at Michigan State University. Please note that refunds may take up to four weeks for processing.

Should the Global Engagement Education cancel the program full refund will be issued to all enrolled participants.

Refund is based on USD. WE WILL NOT CALCULATE CURRENCY RATE CHANGES

Faculty

Dr. Jiahang Li

Dr. Jiahang Li is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Teacher Education, College of Education, Michigan State University (MSU). With a Ph.D. in Reading education from University of Maryland College Park (UMCP), his research interests include educational technology, social media, online language teaching and learning, and foreign language teacher education. He has published many book chapters and journal articles and serves as editorial board members and reviewers for many peer-reviewed journals, including Computers & Education, Educational Researcher, and Foreign Language Annals.

Being one of the team members of the Global Education Engagement program, he has been involved in designing and developing professional development training programs for international educators. For instance, he served as the Principal Investigator (PI) for a two-week professional development program for faculty and instructors from Open University China focusing on online education. 

Dr. Samantha Caughlan

Samantha Caughlan, PhD., is Curriculum Coordinator for the College of Educationā€™s Global Education Engagement program. Dr. Caughlan has coordinated curriculum and directed short-term training of international educator groups since 2015. Among her projects:

Ā· Coordinator for a two-week professional development program for faculty and instructors from Open University China, ā€œOnline Education to Meet the Needs of the Adult learner

Ā· Management of the Argentina Educators Training Program for teachers and principals, Fulbright of Argentina

Ā· Director, PRESTASI, a USAID program for Indonesian teacher educators , where she was responsible for building strong connections between all program elements and leading the action plan thread as well as the M&E plan.

Prior to this experience, she was faculty head of English language arts teacher preparation at two universities. She is widely published in the areas of teacher preparation, English education, and discourse analysis. Prior to earning her PhD, she was an English and theater teacher. In all of these endeavors, she has maintained a focus on assessment as a learning tool for teachers and students.

Dr. Douglas Hartman

Douglas K. Hartman is Professor of Technology & Human Learning in the College of Education at Michigan State University.  He has a joint appointment in the Department of Teacher Education and the Educational Psychology & Educational Technology program. By courtesy, he is an affiliate faculty member with the Asian Studies Center and a core faculty member in the Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. He also coordinates an all-online Masterā€™s degree program on Teaching & Curriculum. Dr. Hartman has authored more than 70 journal articles, book chapters, technical reports, and book reviews.  Among his publications are:  a research review that examines the shift ā€œFrom Print to Pixels:  The evolution of cognitive conceptions of reading comprehensionā€; an essay on ā€œThe Influence of Media on Literacy in the Next Millenniumā€; and a report on ā€œThe Design of a Decade-long School-University Professional Development Collaborative.ā€ His research interests focus on technology integration, information design, and online learning in global contexts. Funding for his research has been made possible by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Spencer Foundation, Central Asia University Partnerships Program, and the U.S.-Russia University Virtual Partner Program.

Ms. Juli Okal

Juli Okal brings passion and creativity to her current role working with adult learners across the globe. Her 28 years of professional experience has developed through learning her way into a variety of functions and domains; marketing, global operations, sales, business development, Six Sigma (process improvement), global human and systems performance.  She thanks MSU for her initial degree in Marketing!

Her passion and style is informed by a 2013 Adult Learning Certificate from Michigan Stateā€™s Higher Adult and Lifelong Education Program, a 2018 International Coaching Federation Associate Coach Certification, and a 2019 Certification in Systems/Team Coaching from the Academy of Executive Coaching. She is also Scrum Product Owner/Scrum master trained by 3M to enable teams to work in an agile, iterative way.

She is currently pursuing her Master of Arts in Educational Technology from Michigan State University.