Collaborative Partners of World-Class Teaching

Enhancing the Online Teaching & Learning Experience

After the initial launch of Canvas during the Summer 2020 term, COLRS continued supporting faculty with their efforts to convert courses to the Canvas learning management system. As part of our ongoing course quality improvement efforts, COLRS staff supported the integration of several new tools to help faculty create engaging and visually appealing courses.

Harmonize, by 42Lines, is a tool designed to enhance online discussions by modeling its functionality on popular social media platforms. Integrating images, video (with auto-captions), audio, and surveys into discussions, as well as intermediate deadlines with reminders, keeps students engaged. Faculty benefit from an activity panel with student engagement statistics and auto-grading tool that will grade based on meeting deadlines.

DesignPlus by Cidilabs offers a variety of tools that allow instructors to stylize the appearance and customize the content of Canvas pages, assignments, syllabi, discussions, and quizzes.

Universal Design Online Inspection Tool (UDOIT) enables faculty to identify and remediate accessibility issues in Canvas courses.

ReadyGo by Cidilabs, a course readiness reporting tool, allows staff to identify courses that are missing content like syllabi prior to a semester's launch. Staff can also create checklists for course readiness.

Providing Faculty Development Opportunities

COLRS staff continued supporting faculty with their efforts to convert courses to the Canvas learning management system. In addition to providing the Canvas faculty training course site and tutorial videos, COLRS staff delivered 27 workshops related to teaching online during the 2020-21 AY.

COLRS workshops included Blended Learning Best Practices, Harmonize Discussions, Fall Teaching Strategy Forum, CidiLabs, Canvas Course Design, Remote Teaching: Building Student Community, Technology Tools for Remote Delivery, Canvas Design Labs, Backwards Design, Canvas Gradebook, and Canvas Workshop for Administrators.

Improving Digital Accessibility

In October 2020, Campus Accessibility Specialist Dr. Vance Martin left UIS to become the Executive Policy Advisor for Accessibility at the University of Illinois System. The ongoing work of the Digital Accessibility Remediation Team (DART) was left in the capable hands of Alana Gomoll, a recent UIS Computer Science graduate and one of Dr. Martin’s student workers during his time at UIS.

In June 2021, Alana began a full-time position as the Program Coordinator for Accessibility, providing supervision and guidance to the work of the DART team. During the 2020-21 AY, DART reviewed 58 online courses for accessibility and remediated over 2,100 digital files. The accomplishments of DART are provided in the Accessibility Impact Report.

DELIVERING PERSONAL ATTENTION

Supporting Online & Remote Educators

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, 53.9% of UIS courses during the 2020-21 AY were taught online. In addition, a large number of on-ground courses were taught in a remote format. COLRS staff hosted twice-daily Zoom office hours to support the many faculty teaching online and remotely. 343 faculty members sought assistance from COLRS during the 2020-21 AY. From October 2020 to July 2021, October, January, and February were the peak months for faculty requesting support.

COLRS also provided support through the Remote Teaching, Keep Teaching, and Keep Learning websites, and Teaching Tips e-mails and blog posts. The blog was viewed over 35,400 times during the year.

Saluting Our Online Graduates

As we did in 2020, UIS celebrated 442 online graduates through an Online Graduate Salute. COLRS staff, along with the UIS web services team, faculty, online program coordinators, and administrators, collaborated in creating a virtual celebration of our graduates.

Developing a Winter Intersession

During the 2020-2021 winter break, UIS offered its first intersession term. Twenty-one online intersession courses were offered over varying term start and end dates. COLRS and ITS worked to develop a new term in Canvas, as well as develop processes for creating and enrolling these unique spring term courses. COLRS staff supported faculty in adapting courses to the 5- to 8-week timeframe. COLRS also offered faculty support by phone, email, and Zoom office hours during the break, including days that the campus was closed for holidays, to ensure courses ran smoothly.

Promoting Online Programs at UIS to Prospective Students

During the 2020-21 AY, COLRS staff and online program coordinators partnered with the UIS Office of Admissions to present three recruitment webinars about learning online. The webinars included information about the format of online classes, required technology, student support available for UIS online students, and our various online degrees and certificates.

EXPERIENCE ENGAGED

Enriching the Scholarship of Teaching

Six UIS faculty participated in the COLRS Faculty Fellows Program. COLRS Faculty Fellows coordinate, facilitate and advocate for research in online and blended learning. They meet twice a semester virtually to discuss and advance their research.

The 2020-2022 COLRS Faculty Fellows are Dr. Lan Dong (English & Modern Languages), Dr. Yanhui Guo (Computer Science), and Dr. Yona Stamatis (Art, Music & Theater). The 2021-23 COLRS Faculty Fellows are Dr. Serkan Karadas (Accounting, Economics & Finance), Dr. Elizabeth Ribarsky (Communication), and Dr. Junfeng Wang (Public Administration).

Partnering with the UIS Community

In April 2021, COLRS hosted an Advisory Board meeting of UIS faculty and staff to help guide the strategic direction of COLRS. COLRS also hosted semesterly meetings with Online Program Coordinators to share ideas for better serving online students.

Providing Online Leadership to UIS

COLRS provides university leadership for compliance with the requirements of the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA), which allows UIS to offer online learning to students residing in other states. COLRS staff coordinate the reporting of data and the resolution of complaints received through the mandated online course complaint form.

The College of Business and Management contracted with Academic Partnerships to develop and offer several new online degree programs. COLRS staff have supported this vendor contract by creating Canvas account access to their instructional designers, participating in planning meetings, and recording lightboard instructional videos for the courses.

COLRS also works closely with Institutional Research and academic units at UIS to create reports that inform decisions about enrollments, course offerings, and responding to COVID-19.

Serving the Profession

COLRS staff served the profession and the university in many capacities throughout the year, often in leadership positions. Externally, COLRS staff were involved in UPCEA, the Illinois Council on Continuing Higher Education (ICCHE), the Faculty Summer Institute Planning Committee, and the Microsoft Accessibility Committee.

At the U of I System level, COLRS staff were also involved with the Digital Accessibility Policy Committee and the Professional Staff Leadership Academy. At UIS, COLRS staff were involved in the Campus Senate, the Academic Professional Advisory Council, Safe Zone, and the CAPE/CARE Awards Breakfast Planning Committee.

COLRS staff presented a workshop on Remote Learning Strategies to Engage Students to the faculty of the UIC College of Medicine in Peoria on December 13. Twenty-one faculty attended the workshop.

COLRS staff delivered multiple presentations at the virtual UPCEA Central Region conference in the fall:

• Faculty’s Perceptions on Online Video Proctoring: Benefits, Challenges, and Lessons Learned. Concurrent session presented by Michele Gribbins
• Moving Orientation Online: A Cross-Campus Collaboration. Concurrent session presented by Emily Boles and Lisa McGuire (Director of Orientation)
• Introduction to HyFlex instruction. Concurrent Session by Vance Martin and Vickie Cook

LIBERAL-ARTS SKILLED

Producing Multimedia Content

In April 2021, Scott Moomaw joined the COLRS staff as the Multimedia Communications Specialist. Scott specializes in video production for web, broadcast, and social media. He serves to help faculty in the creation and editing of video content, including the lightboard and recording studio.

Supporting UIS Continuing and Professional Education

COLRS staff continued to support Continuing and Professional Education (CAPE) during its first full year with dedicated staff. COLRS staff supported and developed the SLATE CMS for registration, communication, and payments, as well as high-level support for the Moodle LMS. During the year, COLRS staff completed a large development project in Slate for the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA). The project included a SLATE application, a user portal to display course completions, course templates and surveys, and a course catalog portal. In addition, after a major vendor stepped away from the project, COLRS staff completed the ICJIA Moodle site development for CAPE. COLRS staff have consulted on approaches for the Illinois Department of Human Services course development projects, as well as developing a CAPE Moodle LMS at UIS that uses SLATE data for authentication.

Supporting the Illinois Online Network

COLRS staff continued to support the operations of the Illinois Online Network (ION) by administering the learning management system and providing support for students. ION faculty support for Moodle course development continued, as did development projects in the SLATE CMS. COLRS staff created templates for non-credit webinars and summer workshops.

Canvas Commons Development

Canvas Commons is an internal content sharing tool built into the Canvas LMS. During the 2020-21 AY, COLRS staff developed items for the Canvas Commons including home pages, module pages, and the Academic Integrity Committee quiz for UIS faculty. The various home pages have been downloaded a total of 74 times.

CARLI OER Textbook Grant

The Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI), hosted by the University of Illinois System, won a $1.08 million grant to develop OER textbooks. The project is one of 9 grants awarded nationally. COLRS staff will complete the faculty development for the textbook HTML5 multimedia features. They will also participate as part of the review team for all texts.