Elaine Crable

Professor of Management Information Systems
Williams College of Business
Xavier University

Project title:

Project overview:

Beginning in Fall 2010, I will begin working with our Library Services and with the JesuitNET CADE program to hold workshops to assist faculty as they design online courses within the Ignatian Framework. With the help of CADE, I will guide faculty as they design their courses using the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (Context, Experience, Reflection, Action, and Evaluation).

Rational for project: Students today need a variety of ways to take classes to meet the time demands in their lives. We can meet the needs of the non-traditional student and even some of our traditional students with distance education courses. These courses need to be designed within the Ignatian Framework.

Project details:

• JesuitNet CADE will work with a small group of faculty who presently are teaching or are interested in online teaching and who would like to better incorporate Ignatian learning principles into their courses.
• Faculty who completed the CADE program will offer to mentor other faculty interested in developing online courses.
• A general rubric for online course delivery which follows the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm will be developed and distributed to online faculty to help them as they map their courses to the Paradigm.
• This project will be evaluated in Spring 2012 using assessment data from three terms.

Indications of successes:

• More online courses will be offered at Xavier in all three of the colleges at the undergraduate and graduate level.
• Mentors volunteer to assist faculty in the development of online courses.
• Students value the courses by registering for them and by positively evaluating these courses.

Challenges:

• Marketing the workshops to faculty and convincing them of its value.
• Developing a meaningful rubric that faculty will find useful and that will act as a road map as they design their online courses.
• Finding and training faculty mentors to help others design online courses.
• Sustaining the training to keep current with the technology as well as the content being taught.