Robert White, David Bell, Carrie Foote, Devon Hensel, David Strong, and Kenzi Latham, School of Liberal Arts
Principal Investigator: Robert White, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, School of Liberal Arts
Co-principal Investigators: Project 1: David Bell, professor of sociology; Carrie Foote, associate professor of sociology; Devon Hensel, assistant professor of sociology; Project 2: David Strong, lecturer; and Kenzi Latham, assistant professor of sociology, Department of Sociology, School of Liberal Arts
Project Title: The Sociology Online Project – Project 1: Methods, Theory, and Statistics, Project 2: Intro and Sports
Funding Level: Project 1: $15,000, Project 2: $5,000
Abstract:
The 21st Century demand for online higher education continues to grow. In response, the IUPUI Sociology Department has offered 3-4 online courses in recent years. With the exception of one recently retired faculty member (as of 12-31-2013), these courses are exclusively taught by associate faculty. Our department has high demand for online courses as evidenced by online sections filling first and often accruing waitlists. Students also increasingly inquire about online possibilities for our major; three upper division course requirements in methods, theory, and statistics. However, we do not offer these courses online and our current full-time faculty members lack the skills and knowledge associated with online pedagogy to field these courses. The Sociology Online Project proposes to address this problem by developing the online teaching capacity of our full-time sociology faculty members. A team of faculty members will be trained in online higher education pedagogy and will redesign five courses for online delivery, four required major courses and one elective. By developing these skills among the full-time faculty, we will expand online delivery of courses without having to rely solely on associate faculty. Successful completion of this project will allow us to offer an online sociology minor, be well situated to develop an online major in the near future, as well as make it possible to design and offer several online graduate courses in the longer-term.