Adjusting the modality of your courses can make a big difference for students and teachers.
Online and Hybrid offerings allow:
- more flexible schedules
- access to courses onsite and offsite
- student engagement in more self-directed and project-based learning
- students to develop their technical and digital collaboration skills
- instructors to deploy asynchronous elements to better engage students
- instructors to personalize their student interactions and respond to individual student needs
- more variety of online and Open Educational Resources
- Departments to run courses with fewer students, including over summer and winter sessions
- Departments to conserve classroom space
- UMES to satisfy the USM out-of-classroom experiences/non-traditional learning mandate
Quality Online/Hybrid Instruction and Digital Teaching and Learning Standards
In order to ensure the quality of online, hybrid, and digital-enhanced courses at UMES, the office of Academic Affairs and Center for Instructional Technology and Online Learning (CITOL) have developed a set of guidelines and requirements for review of Quality Online Instruction (QOIUMES). All online and hybrid courses must be reviewed according to these standards—which address such areas as navigation, accessibility, alignment, and engagement.
Instructors developing online and hybrid courses for the first time must request a course modality change/addition, which involves consultation with CITOL and may include pedagogical training, course design assistance, and technical support. A special emphasis is placed on facilitating regular and substantive interactions (RSIs) in all courses.
All online instructors at UMES are not required to be certified to teach online but may want to voluntarily complete the Online Teaching Certification Course before the start of their online courses.
To request a course modality change, submit a Help Desk Ticket requesting a Modality Change/Addition review.
Prepare a packet containing the following items:
- An accessible online or hybrid syllabus for the course
- UMES ONLINE Accessible Syllabus Template (please download as a Word document)
- Creating Accessible Microsoft Word Documents
- For more on course and module Learning Objectives, see this Quality Matters page on Writing Quality Learning Objectives
- A Completed Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) Activity Statement
- For more details on RSI see Everett Community College’s Overview of RSI
- Check out RSI on the Faculty Hub at Chemeketa Community College
- For even more details on RSI see St. John’s University’s website on RSI
- For Hybrid courses: Hybrid Course Differentiation Description
- For more details on designing effective Online & Hybrid Courses see Carnegie Mellon’s checklist.
- For even more details on incorporating active learning in an online course see Carnegie Mellon’s website.
Attach the 2 required documents to the Help Desk Ticket requesting the Modality Change Review.
If you have any concerns, comments, or questions, please contact the CITOL office today!
