In place of the large-scale updates about the Transformation that we offered last year, we will focus more on what is happening in the areas directly concerned with teaching and learning.
Course Modalities Finalized
Last week, the Faculty Assemblies of all of the future VTSU schools met, for the first time at the same time, on Zoom, as a preview of what it will mean to be a unified faculty. Among the agenda items, Joan Richmond Hall, the “Moderator” of the VTC Faculty Assembly (their word for “President”) presented the definitions agreed-upon for the “course modalities.”
This document is the latest version of a conversation that began with the Teaching and Learning Innovation Team, a sub-team of the Academic Operations area of the Transformation. We were asked to solve a problem. Each institution uses a distinct “code” to organize and classify the courses that we offer so that they can be catalogued and searchable in a database. We were charged to propose a common “code” for the VTSU to use. Long story short: there was more than one long, seemingly interminable conversation about the many factors to consider.
Sarah Chambers, who is ABD in her doctoral program on Instructional Design Leadership, often led this conversation because she is steeped in the current research on learning. She has been leading a monthly discussion of the “Learning Modalities Group” drawing faculty and staff from across the system. The first draft of the modalities arose from these discussions. In this issue she writes moire about the “Hybrid” modality.
By the end of the fall, the TLI team brought a one-page set of terms to the Academic Programs sub-team. The next step was to bring this new code to the registrars and schedulers to revise, as well as to test it with the faculty. That conversation went on all summer long, and in recent weeks all of the sub-teams reviewed and approved the results that were presented to you.
It’s important to note that there isn’t much new about the document. Most of the modalities listed are and have already been available to students in their course selections for years, without too much confusion. The document agrees upon the names and starts to describe how to categorize them in a logical way.
It’s also important to note what the document is not. The definitions of the course modality are like a “dictionary” naming things. They aren’t precise, and as the discussion of the recent faculty Assembly meeting demonstrated, there are still fine distinctions to be made. It is not, in general, a policy document in the sense that it doesn’t say what we should do, nor does it elaborate on the factors to consider when offering each modality. It just provides a common tongue.
F2F+ as a course modality
The newest component in the document is “Face-to-Face Plus” (F2F+).
The Core Academic Operations team picked up the term F2F+ during discussions of course modalities. It was meant to be a way to talk about these courses in which a) a course is offered in a classroom, but b) it is also remotely accessible to students from other places via a camera in the room.
You may or may not be aware that this kind of course is happening all over the country. In the pandemic, many institutions (those with the money and staff) just rapidly installed and turned the cameras on; administration directed faculty to teach to students engaging through these two different “modalities”. There are many names out there for it: blended learning, hybrid, hyflex, and others. Castleton eventually built this capacity by putting cameras in most rooms, but the VSC made a wise decision by not telling us faculty that we had to turn them on.
The prospect of turning the camera on raises many questions for faculty, and reasonably so. For one, we at Castleton aspire to relationship-based education, the kind of education that includes getting to know our students personally and guiding them personally, beginning with the occasion of meeting with them regularly in the small classes we teach. Emerging from the remote teaching of the pandemic, we have been eager to “get back to the classroom,” and so we are now very conscious that those classes have always been “face to face.” Remote learning wasn’t ideal, so how can we say that remote access would be a good, or even fair experience for the remote learner, in comparison to the classroom student?
The transformation proposes an idea: we should do everything we can to bring that kind of a classroom experience to everyone we can, especially the citizens of Vermont, some of whom don’t have the wherewithal to access this experience in-person. This is the challenge: to open up this small classroom experience and provide it in a way that, while it won’t be the same for remote and in-person students, will be equitable in providing the benefits of this classroom experience. We have been designating the idea “Face-to-Face Plus.”
The course modalities document also emphasizes student choice in the definition, but it affirms that faculty will be making the decision about the parameters of the choice. So students may have a choice to attend in a particular way and may not, depending on the faculty member. For example: One faculty member may insist that all students enrolled at the host campus must come to the classroom. One faculty member may give those students the choice. Or, a student attending course on the Lyndon campus but who lives halfway between the Lyndon and Johnson campuses may have a choice to drive to Johnson sometimes to attend in-person, should they wish. The intent is not to make a false promise that all students will have all choices and faculty have to provide them on a class-by-class basis. The document emphasizes that the faculty will have to manage the choice and set their own policies as they do with other classroom matters.
The next question under discussion is how to designate the courses to students in Self-Service so that students can quickly see what the host campus would be for a course designated F2F+. If they are a student who normally does not take classes on the host campus, they will be assured remote access, though they may choose to attend the campus classroom in-person if that is permitted.
“Flexible Face to Face Plus” as a Program Modality
Given the way this course modality discussion paralleled with Optimization, when the TLI sub-team proposed the list, the term was quickly adopted as a description of program modality, as well. Roughly 80% of programs are currently imagined as being accessible in their entirety for students residing on at least two the future VTSU campuses, mostly through courses with the camera on. In truth, five years from now, programs will be achieving this accessibility goal through a mix of course modalities that will be different for every program. Some courses will be face to face; some “F2F+” while some will be hybrid; some synchronous or a-synchronous online; some will be modalities that we haven’t even started trying, such as VR. The array for any program will depend on all sorts of factors, not the least of which will be the modalities that faculty themselves feel comfortable teaching in.
So, currently the term is being used to describe such programs to perspective students is “Flexible Face-to-Face Plus” and F2F+ is being used as a name of a course modality.
The “F2F+ Pilot” is Working to clarify this new course modality.
27 faculty members from throughout the future VTSU are participating in a pilot to explore this proposition: F2F+ is its own course modality. That is, it isn’t just the classroom with the camera turned on. They worked through the summer to explore the literature of course design and this kind of “hybrid” or “blended learning.” They attended workshops and worked together in small cohorts. This fall they are all offering courses that test concepts and ideas about how to do F2F+ well.
The intent of this work is to establish some “best practices” in offering this kind of course.
The faculty are being supported by a team composed of the TLI sub-team and leaders from Information Technology Services and the Transformation Project Management team. Transitioning into a unified and system-wide support system has not been easy and this transition is ongoing. The mission of this project is to work together to determine how best to launch these courses beginning next year and deliver them widely throughout the VTSU.
In future updates I will outline some of the methods being tested and the insights being discussed by these faculty members. They are not only considering the design, delivery, and pedagogical approaches to the course, but they are also talking about matters such as how to advise IT Services on equipping classrooms. The TLI team is learning along with them about the kinds of support structures that will be needed to scale up these courses. And one of the central goals of the project is to take this on as a more unified faculty working together across campuses.
More on this project soon!
