Photo: Yingjie Liu
Jennifer Redd, the director of eCampus, center, receives the OLC Award for Excellence in Faculty Development for Online Teaching.

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC), a professional organization devoted to advancing the quality of online learning worldwide, selected San Jose State University to receive the 2016 OLC Award for Excellence in Faculty Development for Online Teaching. Director of SJSU’s eCampus Jennifer Redd accepted the award for SJSU at the OLC Accelerate 2016 Conference in Orlando, Florida, on Nov. 19. Faculty development for online teaching is supported across the university by the eCampus Department. eCampus serves the entire SJSU community to advance the effective use of current and emerging technologies, to cultivate excellence in teaching, and to foster significant student learning.

“We want faculty and staff to know we are looking ahead and keeping up on research so we can include that in our workshops,” Redd said. “We are here to help faculty. If they are thinking about redesigning a course, it’s not just about technical tools but changing the pedagogy and trying something new.”

The implementation of a successful faculty development program involves collaboration among departments on campus to address the needs and goals of their online courses and programs. During 2015-16, Director of eCampus Jennifer Redd said she and her staff members offered more than 100 workshops with 500 faculty and staff registered to participate in person or online.

“We can reach out to departments, and we can do specialized workshops for them or custom instructional design,” Redd said. “eCampus offers support across campus. The courses don’t need to be fully online.”

In addition to helping with the development of online courses, eCampus provides training on a variety of software tools available to the campus.  A full list of upcoming workshops is available online.

The university was selected for the OLC Award based on the following criteria: effectiveness in helping faculty develop and teach a large number of high-quality online courses; scope of impact within the institution; maintaining a high level of faculty satisfaction as judged by surveys and participation rates; and letters of support from faculty who participated in the workshops.

In 2014, OLC recognized SJSU’s School of Information, in the College of Applied Sciences and Arts, for its fully online graduate programs. The faculty in the School of Information provide the T3 Series (Teaching Tips and Techniques) to provide support to faculty in other disciplines who are interested in engaging with online tools.

Also at the conference, SJSU eCampus Instructional Designer Yingjie Liu presented at the conference. Her presentation was about the use of templates to scaffold the course design process for instructors.