HCC IS PILOT PROGRAM FOR STATE IN DISTANCE LEARNING INSTRUCTION FOR FACULTY

Ten HCC instructors are half way through an eight-week pilot program, funded from a state grant application, to provide the basics in developing and teaching on-line courses. HCC received a distance learning grant from the NCCC System Office to pilot test a course developed by the Virtual Learning Community (VLC).

HCC was one of only 10 community colleges in North Carolina who were awarded the grant for a new Principles & Techniques of Online Instruction Course (PTOI). Evelyn Kientz and Joan Gilstrap collaborated to develop the grant proposal.

Because online instruction is so new, most two-year and four-year college faculty did not receive instruction in this pedagogy during their academic years. According to Angela Blankenship, instructor for the pilot program, "This is an exciting approach to provide a ‘How To Teach’ course to make it easier for all parties involved." The intention, said Blankenship, is to help community college instructors to get started on the right foot when they approach teaching distance learning courses for the first time.

To implement the PTOI course, the HCC director of distance learning - Joan Gilstrap – approached Angela Blankenship to teach the course because of her expertise and also her enthusiasm. Then Ms. Gilstrap issued an invitation to faculty to participate. Gilstrap and Blankenship chose the emphasis from their own perspectives and provided class topics that would be the most instructional and helpful.

Ms. Blankenship has a B.S. degree in psychology from Fairmont State College and a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Radford University. With five years teaching experience at Halifax Community College, Ms. Blankenship has been a champion for distance learning courses at HCC. She developed HCC’s Developmental Psychology as a College-by-Cassette video course tailoring all of the assignments for local use. She has taught the course for four semesters.

Angela also teaches General Psychology as an online course using VLC as the template; however, she used a different textbook and developed all of the exercises, tests, discussion forums, policies, and grading information for the course. She has taught this course for four semesters. Students consistently give her classes high ratings for course interactivity and communication with students. She is highly respected by her peers as an innovative member of the faculty, and is regarded as being accomplished in her field.

From the HCC volunteers, ten faculty members were selected to participate in the PTOI course: B.T. Brown, Joe Bryant, Ellen Grant, Barbara Hasty, Dr. Pocahontas Jones, Bijoy Patnaik, Ben Sellers, John Stams, Nina Swink, and Charles Wilkinson. The faculty members selected to participate in the course have varying levels of experience – some, no experience; some, minimal experience; and some have a great deal of experience. All asked to be a part of the project to improve their skills.

The current PTOI course participants will evaluate the course, methodology and their experiences and return the survey results to Raleigh. Based on the evaluations of the participating community colleges, the Virtual Learning Community will revise the course and offer it system wide.

The ultimate goal is to make teaching online courses a positive experience.