SUNY Effective Online Practices Award Program

The purpose of an active learning classroom is to make it easier and more effective for faculty or instructors to facilitate collaborative work and authentic learning activities with their students.

Now that the “BSN in 10” has been signed into law in New York State, nursing programs are investigating ways to create seamless transitions from the associate degree level to the bachelor’s and master’s degree levels. The new law requires that nurses earn their bachelor’s credential within ten years of their initial licensure as a registered nurse.
SUNY Empire State College offers a RN-BSN program, as well as a Masters in Nursing Education and a Masters in Nursing Administration. These degrees are delivered online and serve the needs of adult learners very well. They afford flexibility and reasonable costs, and assist students in balancing work, family and life demands.
The college has established enhanced partnerships with several SUNY community colleges to facilitate degree complete for their nursing graduates. Three examples of partnership programs include SUNY Ulster, SUNY Corning and SUNY Rockland.

As we begin to delve more deeply and consistently into assessing SUNY GenEd and NCC Institutional Learning Outcomes across the curricula, it seems logical to search for new and varied ways to convert existing projects to achieve the goals of additional learning outcomes. There are new/different methods of assessment to appeal to a variety of learning preferences. I piloted use of a new tool to enhance digital learning, visual literacy and presentation in two of the business courses I teach. The students were asked to create infographics using Visme (visme.co) in lieu of writing a traditional paper.

Alternative formats for traditional assignments, especially in online and blended environments, is an engaging way to assist students in engaging with their work. It opens the students to new skill sets and improved ways to present what they have learned. It provides an alternate opportunity for students to synthesize the information they are exploring and reading, and can also raise the interest level of the instructor and students. The varied formats and themes add visual interest as well as room for clear content. The added bonus is the production of one assignment that can be used for varied types of assessment.

Although I began using virtual immersive environments with Second Life in the 2000’s, it was the advent of open source virtual reality environments that made these island affordable. Since 2013 within the Masters of Arts in Emerging Technology (MALET) program, I have had my own virtual reality environment so online courses and graduate-program meetings could have a presence and community for students across the globe. These environments have allowed: classes where I develop shared activities and discussions (without the teacher dominance of a webinar); places for students to work independently or with course colleagues; forums for outside speakers; and, a pilot virtual-reality residency where I emulated interactions with speakers and audience as during geographically-based event. After some startup assignments, the students quickly adapt to an environment where they perceive a shared space that transports them beyond simply sitting at their computer. The relationships built between the instructor and students have been strong, and alumni have continued with me beyond their graduate program. I am even developing a nascent think tank to look at the many new ways that virtual and augmented reality is starting to influence education, communication and the world.

VoiceThread is a learning tool that enables instructors and/or students to create and share various texts (images, videos, documents, PowerPoint slides, etc.) that they can then share comments on using text or audio. At MCC, it is embedded as a tool in Blackboard. My Fall 2018 pilot study using VoiceThread in an Online Composition course showed a dramatic positive impact on my student success and retention. I achieved a 78% C or better rate, with 22% of students receiving A's; this is in stark contrast to the overall stable average of 59% C or better rate in all Composition Courses from semester to semester. In my online course, I used Voice Thread as an introductory icebreaker exercise during preview week, to provide weekly lectures and feedback on drafts, and to facilitate group discussions and for peer review. In addition to the positive data, students provided anecdotal feedback stating how much they enjoyed the VoiceThread lectures and discussion.

Menu Planning is a class with both creative and challenging concepts. Many students are not ready for all of the mathematical concepts involved in the course. To help teach these concepts online, I developed instructional videos with demonstrations, collaborative practice activities, and quizzes. In addition, written transcripts accompany these videos, to better accommodate multiple learning styles, in alignment with the concept of differentiated instruction.

In the Winter of 2019, SUNY Geneseo offered its first intersession semester, attracting Geneseo and non-Geneseo students (including many non-traditional learners) to this intensive 3-week offering. The challenge for one instructor was to adapt a 16-week face-to-face course (S/COMN 103 Interpersonal Communication) of 50 students to this new environment without sacrificing student engagement and learning. Furthermore, as the course satisfies a Social Science General Education requirement and is a foundational course for the 500+ Communication major at Geneseo, the intersession version needed to be nearly equivalent in workload and rigor to the regular semester course. The instructor and learning technology specialists worked to design a course that would quickly establish student-instructor and student-to-student rapport in support of learning objectives. Key strategies included thoughtful course policies and informal extra-class communication including REMIND, Google Hangout office hours, multi-media discussion posts, and short, online videos to frame the course’s nine modules, two essays, discussion activities, and midterm and final exams. The result is Fast-Community, a replicable system for an engaged online class particularly well suited to a shortened time frame. The course is freely available on Canvas at https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/1541068

Creating asynchronous online learning communities that parallel the communities formed in on-campus courses can be challenging and complex. By using interactive tools, such as Google Slides, faculty can create innovative opportunities for students to learn about each other and create connections among students. Specifically, creating a space for students to contribute to an interactive presentation introducing themselves to the class creates a heightened sense of community not yet achieved without it. This practice describes an innovative way to transform the learning community in an online course by encouraging students to connect with each other at the start of the semester through interactive student-created presentations.

In the Teaching Methods and Strategies asynchronous course, students are required to formalize best practice teaching strategies (SSSC, 2019; Harmon & Marzano, 2015; Hebert, 2011) in the New York Stated Education Department Lesson Plan Assessment (NYSED, 1997; NYSED, 2005; NYSED 2015). This course (description) emphasizes health education instructional methodologies in school settings which effect health behaviors. Students demonstrate health education instructional strategies and evaluate student learning objectives. Some instructional methodologies may include discussion, lecture, problem solving, demonstration, experiment, role play, cooperative learning, educational games, debates, goal setting, peer evaluation, use of media and computer-assisted instruction.

The CEI Academies for faculty development have gained traction and acclaim on the University at Buffalo’s campus. Through relatively modest investment and grant support, the Center for Educational Innovation has been able to serve the larger university by training staff in course design, teaching, and pedagogical best practices and theory. By virtue of the Academies, CEI is able to provide faculty with the skills and knowledge necessary to implement effective course design as they seek to enhance their educational offerings and build online infrastructure within their decanal units and departments. At the heart of this initiative is a commitment to shareable and scalable content, whereby the university and the SUNY system may generate online course capacity, while meeting basic faculty development needs. System-wide, CEI plans to expand the impact of the Academies through a forthcoming MOOC version in addition to a special workshop this summer for SUNY learning designers.