These were the instructions provided to each group:
What does it take to be a quality online teacher and provide quality online instruction? What standards should we have for quality online courses? These are the topics we will be working on today, and over the course of the day you’ll explore both topics.
Our goals today are to produce comprehensive recommendations for both quality online courses and online instruction. From these recommendations you will create rubrics that will be used later this year when we survey our online teachers.
Outcomes
1. Design a rubric to evaluate online courses with the purpose of providing useful feedback to guide the development of new online courses and improve existing courses.
2. Design a rubric to evaluate online teaching for the purpose of providing self-feedback and improving online instruction.
Evaluation
During the day we will all working in two teams on both topics, beginning with the first outcome listed above. You will have 45 min – 1 hour to discuss the characteristics of quality online courses and develop your rubric criteria; more time can be provided if needed. Comprehensive, well organized checklists / rubrics are expected.
Each team will be responsible for leading a 30-min (approximately) presentation and discussion with the full group of online teachers of one of the topics. Mid-way through your work on the first topic you will learn which team will present first. The other team will lead the second discussion later in the day.
During this general discussion you will be expected to solicit advice and input from the other team. They will have been working as diligently as you on completing the task (whether this is the 1st or 2nd outcome). At the end of the day you will re-convene with your teams and have time to prepare a more polished rubric, incorporating ideas and suggestions from the other team, although your end product today may still be considered a rough draft. This rubric will then be used to create a survey that all online teachers in SECPSD will take.
Procedure
You have been divided into four small groups of 3-4, but will be collaborating with one other small group; thus one team (of 6 to 8 people) will consist of two smaller groups (of 3 to 4 people). However, you will be working with your other small group virtually. They will be working in a different room and no F2F contact is allowed until you meet to present and lead the full group discussion. It is up to you to decide how this collaboration will occur.
Your first task is to partner up with one other group. You must determine how you will arrange this. Every group of 3-4 will work with only one other group. You should attempt to complete this task as quickly as possible.
You must also keep your facilitator fully involved in your preparations and discussions. We have scheduled 1 hour for this collaboration for the 1st topic; more time may be provided if needed.
We will then meet together as one large class in the board room, and the team that has been randomly selected to present first will have ½ hour to present and lead the discussion. Be sure to record input from the other team, as you will want to incorporate their ideas and suggestions into your final product.
When the first team has finished their presentation/discussion, we will repeat the process with the other outcome. The team who did not present the first outcome will lead the discussion for the second outcome.
At the end of the day you will have time to meet again in teams to prepare the final rubric.