MERLOT International Conference Vancouver 2003

1. A Faculty Development Project: Implementing Quality Online Teaching & Learning Using theMERLOTPeer Review Model MERLOT International Conference Vancouver 2003 Laura Franklin Cathy Simpson Northern Virginia Community College

2. Session Objectives • Explore plan to increase quality and quantity of MERLOT peer reviews • Demonstrate how MERLOT and institutional partners can work together to meet their respective goals • Describe NVCC National Endowment for the Humanities Focus Grant proposal

3. Vision and Mission MERLOT’S VISION is to be the online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share teaching-learning materials and pedagogy. MERLOT’S MISSION is to improve the effectiveness of teaching & learning by expanding the quantity and quality of peer-reviewed online learning materials that can be easily incorporated into faculty designed courses.

4. Critical Issues forMERLOT • Need to provide more high quality peer reviews • Need to engage and train more peer reviewers

5. Critical Issues - MERLOT World Languages • 900+learning materials in MERLOT World Languages (~67% of Humanities collection) • Eight sponsored Editorial Board members with various levels of institutional support • Modest pool of volunteer external reviewers • Minimum of two content experts for each review

6. MERLOT World Languages • Arabic (9) • Chinese* (80) • ESL* (105) • French* (200) • German* (124) • Greek* (12) • Hebrew (7) • Italian (17) * MERLOT Editorial board member in 2003

7. MERLOT World Languages • Japanese (18) • Latin* (47) • Portuguese* (13) • Russian (15) • Spanish* (185) • Less Commonly Taught Languages (34) • Multilingual Resources* (25) *MERLOT Editorial board member in 2003

8. Critical Issues for NVCC • Faculty development – Faculty need support to develop quality online, hybrid, and web-enhanced courses. • Quality - Faculty need standards. • Cost-effectiveness - Faculty can build and share materials in a community of peers. • Increased enrollment -

9. Possible Solution What if we had a local project where we could actually train peer reviewers in all the language areas that we need?

10. Icing on the cake What if we could actually pay these folks for their time and work?

12. Humanities Focus Grants: • help schools, colleges, universities, libraries, museums and other non-profit institutions improve formal humanities education in the United States from kindergarten through college and university. • provide educators with the opportunity to consider significant humanities topics and to map institutional directions for teaching the humanities.

13. NVCC Grant Proposal Twenty-five NVCC faculty participants will: • Receive MERLOT peer review training. • Conduct minimum of four-six peer reviews during the course of the project. • Work with a MERLOT World Languages editor in the language they teach. • Submit their peer reviews to the MERLOT database.

14. NVCC Participant Pool • 16 FL and 28 ESL full-time faculty and more than 100 adjunct faculty • Content experts in ARA,CHI,FRE,GER,GRE,ITA,JPN,LAT, PORT,RUS,SPA and VTN

15. Benefits to Participants • Deeper awareness of best of online materials in World Languages • New ideas how to integrate ready-to-use materials in World Languages in existing curriculum. • Improved ability to judge quality of content, potential effectiveness, and ease of use of online materials

16. Benefits to Participants • An opportunity to develop personal quality standards prior to designing online materials and assignments. • A unique opportunity to collaborate with content experts in the discipline across the country and around the world. • Compensated professional development.

17. Benefits to NVCC • Increased number of faculty knowledgeable about quality online learning materials • Establishment of set of standards for identifying quality online learning materials • Increased quality of online, hybrid, and technology-enhanced courses

18. Establishment of learning community for faculty developing online, hybrid, and technology-enhanced courses • Creation of faculty mentoring system for peer review of online materials

19. Benefits to the VCCS • Provides model for future training at other VCCS colleges • Provides instructional design support for faculty using technology for teaching and learning. • Provides on-campus professional development program that maximizes faculty and staff exposure to instructional tools and techniques

20. Benefits to the MERLOT Learning Community Collaboration between NVCC faculty and the rest of the MERLOT online community grows and enhances the collection.

21. Next Steps: Other Possible Funding Sources DOE Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Program • $40-130K; 30 awards per year • Projects that ”strengthen and improve undergraduate instruction in international studies and foreign languages.”

22. NEH Education Development and Demonstration- Curricular • $250k; up to three years • Projects that ”enable teachers to integrate technologically innovative humanities materials and approaches into their teaching and promote alliances among teachers in distant institutions.”

23. DOE National Resource Center Program for Foreign Languages and Area Studies • Up to three years • Projects that ”focus on teacher training activities on the language, languages, area studies or general topics of the center.”