SUNY Effective Online Practices Award Program

To equip new faculty with the skills and knowledge necessary to excel in modalities such as online, hybrid, blended and hyflex courses we found the need to create a course that would provide faculty the tools to meet compliance and quality standards. The standards include Middle States, OSCQR, and accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) principles.
To meet these needs we created a course that is facilitated through a blended format and held over six weeks. Each week includes a one-hour live Zoom session that is recorded and posted to the course for those who cannot attend. There are online activities for each weekly topic.
This course follows the course development and design model through a foundation of principles outlined in A Faculty Playbook created and distributed by the Online Learning Consortium. The course covers best practices and instructional design tips, templates, courses for observation, and strategies to create an engaging course to meet these standards.

The Affective Filter Hypothesis (Dulay and Burt) (Krashen) of Second Language Acquisition acknowledges that negative emotional responses to a language learning environment can impact the ability to acquire language. In other words, when we are nervous or stressed, it is difficult to think, write or speak in a new language. Adults learning a new language are particularly aware, and perhaps self-conscious of, errors in pronunciation. The Affective Filter may cause adult students to shy away from taking on pronunciation challenges. In 2021 I developed an online curriculum for ESL 139 Pronunciation at Monroe Community College. Using VoiceThread I have been able to minimize the stressful and intimidating situations of students attempting to produce new words in front of their peers, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of a community of learners who benefit from interaction. Additionally, through individual audio and video submissions I can provide targeted feedback to each student. In the broader discussion of the pros and cons of online learning, I have found that teaching ESL 139 Pronunciation online has more advantages than disadvantages. Each student in the course contributes and receives feedback equally, minimizing the Affective Filter that might keep some students quiet.

HyFlex teaching is different from traditional face to face interaction. In the HyFlex modality a student can join in the class in-person, online (synchronous) or can go through lecture notes and video in their convenient time schedule to meet the course goals and objectives. For online participants most of the communication involved is through nonverbal methods like discussion forum, power point presentation, email and recorded video lecture. Adequate digital literacy knowledge is mandatory for students and faculty. Students should be self-motivated to be a successful learner. Through online discussion forums students will get more opportunity to discuss and will get more time to think/research about a topic. It is obvious students will expect that they will receive at least the same or equivalent knowledge through online compared to face to face interaction. The purpose of this study is to addressed the issues related with HyFlex teaching such as i) Technologies requirement to teach HyFlex course effectively ii) Benefit and challenges involved in a HyFlex modality iii) How online students can get equal learning environment like traditional in-person students.

The message we hear from the SUNY college administration, in their strategic plan, is to improve enrollment and retention. How can we improve enrollment and retention? Well, the answer is pretty clear: if SUNY colleges can offer solutions that benefit both traditional and nontraditional students, we will be ahead of the game. SUNY was proactive in the delivery of beneficial solutions to student engagement in the classroom. Through an IITG grant in 2022, SUNY faculty were encouraged to participate and implement the Hyflex modality in their classrooms in a Course Resiliency and IITG grant. The Hyflex modality has its pros and cons. This modality fosters Student Empowerment. However, it comes with a cost. Faculty need additional resources to implement this modality, such as teaching assistants. Having a teaching assistant for each faculty member would most definitely eat up the budget resources that SUNY administers. But what is most important? We need the students to boost our enrollment and retention numbers. How can we boost these numbers? By empowering students in their learning. It is a double-edged sword. There is a tight balance whose outcome we are yet to see.

Instructional Design and Distance Learning (IDDL) paired up with the School of Education to pilot the Peer Review Process within the Course Design Review Process using OSCQR prior to the Instructional Designer Review. Faculty peer reviewers completed a Peer Reviewer Orientation that included sessions on utilizing and understanding OSCQR standards, and accessibility in addition to participating in a course design review for their course with a peer and instructional designer.

This effective practice outlines an innovative career skills online training program developed at SUNY Empire that has demonstrated effectiveness in equipping working professionals to manage their talent for workforce adaptability and career growth. First launched in 2015 as a 4-credit online course, its competency model and personalized skills labs have empowered over 1,000 SUNY Empire's working adults with self-directed career enhancement techniques tailored for New York job market dynamics. Concurrently, a Coursera specialization has extended its global impact – over 175,000 working professionals across 200+ countries have enrolled. Rigorous assessments confirm widespread positive outcomes, with 93% of students mastering sustainable career planning techniques. Moreover, 72% of graduates in New York and worldwide report expanded skill sets and career progression post-program. This resounding New York-originated solution now validated for localized and global audiences alike confirms the program as replicable best practice for the changing workplace.

The AI-Enhanced Pedagogy for Dynamic Learning Experiences is an innovative approach that integrates the use of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, into the design of class discussions, with the goal of fostering student engagement while offering the benefits of personalized learning.
Instructors utilize AI chatbots to analyze students' historical participation and interaction data, tailoring discussion prompts based on individual preferences and interests.
ChatGPT facilitates dynamic discussions by generating personalized prompts, ensuring diversity and stimulation to promote active engagement with the course material.
AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, are integrated into the online discussion platform to analyze students' interaction patterns and historical engagement.
ChatGPT generates discussion topics based on individual preferences, ensuring discussions align with students' interests, contributing to a more engaging and diverse learning experience.
AI-driven class discussions, facilitated by ChatGPT, promote increased engagement as students encounter topics tailored to their interests, fostering a more participatory learning environment.

The E-Portfolio set of learning activities and assignments in a semester-long online course (undergraduate and graduate) incorporates deep learning and transfer experiences for learners. Learners engage in cycles of exploring a topic, identifying relevant content, making sense of it, and integrating it into their long-term memory through connection-making and eventually creating digital artifacts. The digital artifacts represent the learners’ “take” on the topic and can include infographics, blog posts, annotated bibliographies, vlogs, screencast videos, audio podcasts, and others. Over time and in iterative cycles, learners revise their work (digital artifacts), incorporating new understandings from ongoing learning experiences in the course, expanding the connections they’ve identified, and ultimately publishing their artifacts to a public platform of their choosing in a coherent, curated collection – their e-portfolio (website or e-book).

The E-portfolio helps instructors to bring their learning outcomes to life by scaffolding learners to synthesize course content, communicate it in diverse, multi-media formats, and continually add to and refine their understanding and skills related to the course. Learners leave with a curated digital set of evidence of their knowledge, skills, and mindsets from the course along with key habits of lifelong learning. Employers are able to see extensive evidence of graduates' career competencies such as communication, team work, critical thinking, and digital literacy.

Finally, ongoing multi-year research in an IRB-approved study indicates that learners find the activities and assignments quite challenging initially, and over time, recognize their enormous personal value for their learning and career goals.

The University at Buffalo School of Social Work launched a new online Doctorate in Social Work (DSW) program in the fall of 2019. A key aspect of the program is to position graduates to become thought leaders on how emerging technologies can be integrated into the practice of Social Work. This award application describes how Virtual Reality (VR) was integrated across the curriculum and the supports that were developed to aid students in learning this new technology and thinking about how it could be integrated into Social Work practice. VR was integrated into the DSW program using sound curriculum and instructional design principles. Learning activities were designed to help students understand how VR is being integrated into health-related professions, instruct students on how to successfully employ head mounted VR devices (HMD), provide experiential activities to develop facility in using HMD, and to think critically about how they could be or should be used in practice. This culminated in a capstone project where the students developed their own intervention that would utilize VR to improve client outcomes and agency trainings or procedures.

The Professionals in Sustainability webinar series provides a regularly occurring extracurricular opportunity for students in the online Sustainability Management BS program that is specifically targeted to them in both the content focus and modality. The program showcases different career opportunities and paths, particularly in a fairly new and evolving field around sustainability, and provides an opportunity for students to network with professionals working in the field. Webinars are about 30 minutes of content plus 15 minutes for questions and presenters are asked to discuss their background, career trajectory, current initiatives, and general lessons learned as in their talk. The recorded archive enables students who can’t attend a particular session the opportunity to still watch the session, and just about every presenter so far has been open to students following up with them directly later on. The sessions and digital archive also provide an opportunity for marketing and recruiting for the program as well. We will email inquiries about a webinar when they come up, and the YouTube playlist of the archive serves as a potential path to learning about ESF and the online Sustainability Management program.