Making Continuous Improvement a Best Practice for Online Teaching and Learning

Presented by: Janet Cagley, Distance Education Faculty Coordinator, North Orange Continuing Education

Speaker Bio:

Janet Cagley is an experienced educator who has worked at the K12 and post-secondary levels. Janet is skilled in teaching Adult Basic Skills and ESL, Curriculum Development, Educational Technology, and Online Course Design. Janet joined North Orange Continuing Education as a Professor in the High School Diploma Program in 2014. In 2019, she became the NOCE Distance Education Faculty Coordinator, focusing on developing the school’s DE plan, providing online instruction training, and supporting faculty in developing online courses. She earned a Masters in Education from National University and is an M.S. candidate in eLearning, Education from CSU – East Bay.

Session Info:

At NOCE, we decided to develop a new non-credit math program and used this time as an opportunity to embrace a new approach to course design. All too often, even when there are the best of intentions, the learning experience is not truly student-centered. The student doesn’t have a voice in the learning process, and there’s not a strong enough focus on supporting DEI. The design process doesn’t consider how to reflect back on the initial design to determine what can be done to improve outcomes for individuals or cohorts. When there is a reflective period, it happens as a post-mortem, when changes can’t help the current cohort. It’s also been difficult to make data-driven decisions because the LMS provides limited insight into the learning process. We’ve begun to change this dynamic. We’ve been able to build continuous improvement into the design process. We are able to tap into data to identify gaps. Previously, these gaps may have (wrongly) been attributed to learner performance, but we now have insight that allows us to do a deeper dive to see what the real issue may be. It gives us the opportunity to see where problems may exist in the curricular process and make modifications that will support stronger learner outcomes and DEI as well. While this is still a work in progress, the lessons already learned can help others who are considering building continuous improvement into their process.

In this session, we will share rubrics we’ve used to develop our student-centric learning and other aspects of the design process that have allowed us to analyze outcomes, develop recommendations and implement changes to curriculum through our continuous improvement process. We’ll share what the next phase looks like and how we are engaging with other stakeholders across our institution.

Session Outcomes:

• Embed continuous improvement into their design process.
• Think about how to intentionally design for DEIA.
• Understand how to use data to identify gaps that may be resolved through the curricular process.

Session Resources:

Making Continuous Improvement CAGLEY