When we spoke with the folks at UCF about how they train faculty to teach and organize both M and W courses, we got two interesting responses that we thought were important to note.

The first one came from Chuck Dziuban, director of UCF’s Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness. Dziuban explained how seasoned, expert teachers who are new to online teaching and learning oftentimes will initially view integrating technology into their courses as simply transferring what they did in the face-to-face environment to the Web. However, this way of thinking does not work, he says. Instructional designers will basically review with faculty what their course objectives are and how they plan to accomplish and assess those objectives. They’ll also ask faculty how they plan to both refocus and reframe their course. "What faculty have to do is examine every component of their course for its appropriateness for the Web components of their course," Dziuban says.

The end result of this work is typically very positive on a number of levels. "In a sense, for the first time they have had to scrutinize, on an element-by-element basis, every component of their course for the Web. And when they do that, what they essentially do is evaluate those components of their teaching for their effectiveness. It just refocuses them on the teaching end, and we have seen that time and time again. What that has done at UCF is fostered a whole new conversation about teaching and learning through this transformation of faculty from their face-to-face environment to the Web."

The second response came from Barbara Truman, director of Course Development and Web Services. Truman explained that when instructing faculty about M courses, in particular, that it is extremely important to cover the notion of properly sequencing a course. "If there is a disjoin between whatever assignments there were online and whatever happens face-to-face, it can create additional stress on the faculty member and on the student and even on the people who have to support more and more of those courses," she says. "The sequence and the timing and the integration of all the activities - not just the technologies - are very important."