About This Journal
KSU faculty have developed numerous courses in online and hybrid formats. Faculty previously received compensation for developing courses and were prolific in their work. In the very recent past, faculty were forced into teaching in the digital space during the pandemic, creating even more online and hybrid courses. There is a need to catalog, recognize, and provide access to these courses.
The purpose of the Distinguished Course Repository (DCR) is to function as a digital space for experienced faculty to share excellent course designs with their peers, including new and late-hire faculty, giving them access to high-quality course content, which will in turn support ongoing student success.
The KSU DCR includes courses reviewed by fellow KSU collegues. While all online and hybrid courses meet standards specified in college-level Digital Learning Policies for review and approval, the courses accepted into the DCR also demonstrate a distinguished level of design by scoring at least a “95” on the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric. We anticipate that face-to-face courses may also be considered for inclusion in the DCR as they demonstrate effective use of D2L to manage teaching and learning in the face-to-face environment.
The impact of the DCR extends to students, faculty, and the university:
- Students
- Students benefit from taking courses designated as “distinguished” as the designation itself indicates effectiveness and quality.
- Programs that adopt a Distinguished Course can count on consistency across sections and prevent curriculum drift.
- Faculty
- Having a course accepted into the DCR speaks to the quality and significance in Teaching, Supervision, and Mentoring for ARD and P&T decisions. A current emphasis of the USG is student success!
- SoTL opportunities are inherent in the design, development, implementation, and learning analytics of a DCR course.
- University-level service opportunities exist by working as a reviewer and/or by mentoring colleagues in their own development and submission of Distinguished Courses.
- New faculty and last-minute-hires have access to the DCR to identify course templates to utilize during the hectic time of preparing for their first semester teaching schedule, and perhaps be motivated to develop and submit their own course templates in the future.
- Having a course accepted into the DCR speaks to the quality and significance in Teaching, Supervision, and Mentoring for ARD and P&T decisions. A current emphasis of the USG is student success!
- KSU
- More and better support of new and late-hire faculty.
- More and better use of D2L by faculty.
It’s an exciting opportunity to showcase the good work that KSU faculty does in the digital space! We are doing the work, let’s show it off!