Starting in the 2012–13 academic year, Portland State’s Center for Academic Excellence and Center for Online Learning will become a single entity. The merger brings together what the two departments do while leaving out many overlapping aspects.
Starting in the 2012–13 academic year, Portland State’s Center for Academic Excellence and Center for Online Learning will become a single entity. The merger brings together what the two departments do while leaving out many overlapping aspects.
“This merge is bringing two faculty development units together to provide integrated support for curricular innovation and excellence,” said Melody Rose, vice provost for Academic Programs and Instruction. Both centers had similar ideas and resources, so they found it would make more sense to close the divide between the two.
Currently, the centers do basically the same thing; one just focuses more on online classes and activities. The CAE, located in Cramer Hall, provides support to teachers, helping them connect with students and work on teaching, learning and engaging with the community. The COL, located in the Market Square Building, not only supports online courses, but also helps faculty with any technological aspects they wish to use in the classroom.
“It quickly became clear that the work of creating rich learning experiences for students in online environments has much in common with good practice in traditional face-to-face modes of instruction,” said Gary Brown, current director of online learning and future director of the combined center.
Brown has been at PSU since last July and, prior to that, gained 15 years of experience directing a center for teaching, which also brought in a technology side and initiated an online course design process. “So I have stepped across this divide before only to discover, again, that it is a false divide,” he said.
For now, the name and location for the new center are undecided. Rose explained that in the short run, they plan to continue to work where they are now. In the long run, the Space Committee has approved the merged unit to build out a section of Millar Library.
“Moving the combined unit to the library accomplishes three things,” Rose said. “We will retain our faculty development center’s place in the heart of campus, save money on the space currently being leased by COL and we will expand on the unit’s partnership with library colleagues in course design.”
Brown said that in the next few weeks they would be scheduling a retreat with the advisory committee to come up with and develop a new mission and strategies.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Roy Koch said that before they decided to do this merge, “there was an artificial distinction between the place you go if you want to do a technology related instruction and a place you go, that could be related to technology, but is broader in terms of activities.”
As technology becomes more prevalent in students’ everyday lives, incorporating it into the classroom seems like a great idea. Teachers should be able to easily access the tools needed to do that.
“We find that more and more faculty teach in multiple ways: face-to-face, technology-enhanced, hybrid, fully online, etc.,” Rose said. “Sending a single faculty member to two different places for instructional support doesn’t make sense anymore.”
Koch gave an example of large classes with 100 or more students. Professors looking to create a more active environment for student learning would typically go to the CAE. But as time went on, technology associated with making a more engaged classroom became more readily available.
“So trying to bring the technology pieces with all of the other stuff makes this merger very sensible,” Koch said.
Teachers that have great support and resources to get ideas on how to engage a classroom could make learning easier and more accessible.
“These activities assist faculty directly by providing ongoing professional development,” Rose said. “They also benefit students by keeping our faculty up to date with the latest changes and trends in our field, and giving them techniques for addressing modern technological challenges that perhaps they did not experience as students,” she added.
Since the merger is a big change, some people took the opportunity to make a change for themselves as well. In a press release on the PSU website, two employees of the CAE are moving back to previously held jobs. Directors Kevin Kecskes and Leslie McBride, who Brown said have done a terrific job of bringing the CAE to where it is now, will be moving to faculty positions in the College of Urban and Public Affairs.
Aside from the physical aspect of being merged, the people working and the faculty coming together is a great thing to be noted, according to Brown.
“Both units have great people who will no doubt find great synergies as we gain experience working together. But even more exciting are the faculty colleagues who will be coming together to help us in our work,” Brown said. “I understand the work of faculty support to be one that engages broad collaborations to innovate and transform the student learning experience. When that happens, when we all learn—students, faculty, instructional designers, administrator too—that is rewarding and great fun.”
