In order to best prepare our instructional capacity and quality for some continuation of remote instruction in the fall, the campus seeks proposals from faculty to develop fully online courses to be offered in Fall 2020. Priority will be given to course proposal submissions that address degree completion, have high enrollment, or are for types of courses (e.g., labs, studios) that have presented greater challenges in being offered remotely.
Faculty whose proposals are approved will be provided $4,000 in summer compensation(1), and pedagogical and technical support throughout the course design and development process. All instructional faculty are eligible to apply.
A committee will review all course proposals, and awardees will be expected to submit a request for online course approval to the Senate Committee on Courses of Instruction (CCI). Courses are required to be available to students in an asynchronous mode, although they should include options for synchronous engagement via office hours, Google Doc collaborations, study groups, and other interaction. Faculty whose proposals are awarded agree to share their course materials with instructors of future offerings of the course.
Courses will be developed in cohorts of roughly ten faculty led by an instructional designer, supporting staff, and a faculty fellow. Each cohort will work together for six weeks. The first three weeks will be focused on course design, framed by a new UCSC course on designing and developing online courses. The cohort will meet twice weekly in what we expect will be a meaningful learning community. The second three-week period will be used for course production. Loaner equipment will be made available to awardees for recording lecture videos at home, or they will have limited access to filming in studios on campus. The first pair of cohorts will meet from June 15-July 24, and the second pair of cohorts will meet from July 27-September 4.
We are deeply appreciative of your ingenuity and effort in the transition to remote instruction, and we hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to participate in a structured process that will result in creating courses that further engage our students and support learning outcomes.
Proposal Guidelines
In no more than two pages, provide responses to the following prompts:
- Describe your course, including pertinent information such as its sequence in the curriculum, frequency of offerings, enrollment, typical assessments (e.g., papers, exams, quizzes, projects), and any challenges with offering it remotely.
- Explain how a fully online version of your course would positively impact degree completion, have high enrollment, or would help transition a challenging type of course to a fully online format.
- Discuss how an online version of your course may present an opportunity to improve student learning outcomes.
- If you have a serious conflict with one of the cohort dates (June 15-July 24 or July 27-September 4), please give a brief explanation.
Questions? — contact Michael Tassio, Director for Online Education, at mtassio@ucsc.edu.
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(1) Summer compensation is subject to a three month limit from all sources during the summer.
