David Wilkerson, School of Social Work
Principal Investigator: David Wilkerson, professor, School of Social Work
Co-principal Investigators: Katie McCarthy, lecturer, and Samantha Wolfe-Taylor, visiting lecturer, School of Social Work
Project Title: Improving Instructor Feedback to Students of a Fully Online Program: Using an Online Community of Practice Approach for Faculty Development in the MSW Direct Program
Funding Level: $15,000
Abstract:
Distance education programs require proven models of accessible and ongoing professional development (PD) to ensure that their online students receive quality instruction. Ongoing professional development is needed because geographically disparate adjunct faculty, who make up a large proportion of online faculty, are hired on the basis of their industry and professional expertise but typically lack training in pedagogy and possess limited teaching experience—let alone teaching experience in online settings. This project will combine online workshops with the creation of a structured and moderated online setting where online faculty will be called upon to join in a Community of Practice (CoP), a communal approach to professional development (PD) that leverages software affordances to facilitate a sharing of knowledge between novice and experienced faculty who teach in the MSW Direct program. The project commences and pilots its professional development approach with an effort to improve instructor feedback to MSW Direct students—because the quality of an online education depends particularly on the effectiveness of instructors’ feedback to students. Even more so than students in brick-and-mortar universities, online students need timely, effective, constructive, and motivating feedback to ensure high levels of self-efficacy and persistence. Assessment and evaluation of the project will connect online training and participation in the Community of Practice with feedback given to students, and with an assessment of the ways student experience instructor feedback.
