DUOC UC Trip Report
From November 7-11, 2016 I had the opportunity to visit DUOC UC in Santiago, Chile. I was invited to attend and deliver a keynote at their annual conference, and to participate in meetings with staff and other departments from the institution where they shared their progress, challenges, and successes, and reported their accomplishments and future plans.
We first learned about DUOC UC when a team from DUOC visted SLN, international programs and COIL in NYC at the Global Center in October 2014.
Their objective during their first visit was learn more about implementing and managing distance education models. DUOC is a large institution (85,000) in Chile. DUOC is located in Santiago, Chile, and is a fully accredited private higher education institution with 2-, 3- and 4-year technical and professional programs. Since their visit in October 2014, they expanded their distance education programs, and have initiated a successful blended learning pilot.
During my visit to Chile, I had the chance to meet with DUOC UC university administrators and staff at all levels of the organization and within their online programs at several institutions within the system to learn more about DUOC UC in general, and to learn more about their approaches to online teaching and learning from the faculty, student, and support perspectives.
On November 10, 2016 I attended the “VIII Seminario Proyectos de Desarollo e Innovación Académica” and delivered the presentation: Formatos Educativos Flexibles y Formación Online: La Experiencia de la Universidad Estatal – Innovación Institucional y Escala: Comunidad, Insignias Digitales, y Rúbrica De Calidad in Spanish.
I was interviewed by a local newspaper and an article was published in conjunction with the event.
After spending a week with DUOC UC staff and learning about their online teaching and learning models, approaches, success and challenges, I was asked to provide some thoughts and recommendations (see below).
Recommendations
- Build a Community of Practice: for your online/blended faculty and online instructional designers. Creating community across your campuses will exponentially improve consistency, documentation and sharing of best practices, problem solving, showcases, and sense of shared purpose and common goals.
- Provide an online platform for networking – e.g., http://cotecommunity.open.suny.edu/
- Support a couple of annual F2F events – to inform, inspire, celebrate, connect, and nurture effective online education practitioners across the system,
- e.g., http://opensunycotesummit2017.edublogs.org/
- An annual roundtable: open to all online practitioners, can be used to provide updates to the community, and a forum for community input and questions.
- Provide regular online calls with a group online to continue conversations. e.g., http://cotecommunity.open.suny.edu/group/cote-community-call
- Use faculty and IDs as experts in training. http://online.suny.edu/onlineteaching/open-suny-fellow-application-advanced/?role=Expert Use them as your voice, to share their challenges and tips/best practices. https://online.suny.edu/onlineteaching/meet-the-team/meet-the-cote-pd-associates/
- Recognize and showcase your rockstars. https://online.suny.edu/onlineteaching/engage/ambassadorprogram/ambassadors/
- Collect and share best practices. https://www.facebook.com/groups/OSCOTEEffectivePractices/
- Add some social and academic interaction/activities to the autoaprendizaje.
- Conduct research, quality improvement, impact analysis. And publish regular reports, and research results.
- https://online.suny.edu/onlineteaching/tag/cote-report/
- https://online.suny.edu/onlineteaching/research/
- http://online.suny.edu/onlineteaching/research-and-innovation/
- http://www.sunyresearch.net/hplo/?page_id=13
- Need to collect data from both students and faculty. And from the instructional designers and those that support serve online students and faculty.
- Use the OLC quality scorecard to do self assessments at the school, program and institutional levels to insure quality and continuous improvement. https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/consult/olc-spanish-quality-scorecard/
- Have someone external to the institution facilitate this program/process.
- Use the OSCQR online course quality rubric to review, revise and improve online courses and online accessibility – http://bitly.com/OSCQRlinks
- Give a little more freedom/flexibility to your faculty. The cookie cutter approach limits learning/serendipity that might inspire learning and innovation.
- Create an online student orientation:
- With a demo course to see what the course is like – what it looks like, how it functions..
- Give students the opportunity to check their readiness for the model – http://online.suny.edu/assessment/
- Provide resources and information about the expectations and requirements to study online.
- Apply for and win awards. https://online.suny.edu/onlineteaching/awards/
- Present your program at national/international conferences. http://www.sunyresearch.net/hplo/?page_id=9
Description of faculty development program: http://wiki.sln.suny.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=10749123
http://wiki.sln.suny.edu/display/SLNED/SLN+Faculty+Development+Program+illustration
http://wiki.sln.suny.edu/display/SLNED/SLN+Online+Course+Models
Links:
http://bitly.com/allthingscote