This post stems from a discussion in Module 4 where the topic of institutional barriers for change came up. I think this is particularly relevent in course design for distance education. The common design method for traditioanl face-to-face courses is the single author mode. Instructors who have solely taught face-to-face courses might push back on a team-design method of development and not understand the need.
It was suggested that I look at Bate's and Sangra's text (Managing Technology in Higher Education Strategies for Transforming Teaching and Learning) for ways to remove these barriers to change.
One idea they suggest is the importance of technology training for instructors. This particularly struck a chord with me as it seems like an extremely relevant idea for my current position. Effective training would show our instructors the capabilities of our learning management system and would hopefully point out much they don't know. This realization that there are many new things to learn would potentially help ignite the idea that they need to adapt their instructional style for online courses.
Focusing the training on how face-to-face activities translate to online classrooms would be particularly useful I think. Walking through a syllabus and saying "Ok - this break out group discussion you do once a week in your face-to-face class, what are your ideas on how to achieve the same level of interactivity online?" We would then follow up by providing training on different collaboration tools within our LMS. Training that is authentic in context will likely yield the best result and hopefully also encourage innovation when instructors are exposed to new technologies and tools.
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