Digital notebooks to create faculty continuity and consistent student experiences

Abstract

<p>Consistency of information across courses and programs is vitally important in online education. An ever-present challenge exists to keep faculty and students abreast of essential modifications to course content which threatens the faculty and student experience. Through supporting faculty self-efficacy (Hampton, et.al., 2020) the student experience is enhanced. By faculty being bolstered with the same information and course content support in real-time, students across multiple sections of a course are assured a quality experience that should be very similar across a cohort. This includes grading standards being as consistent as possible among faculty as well as uniform lines of questioning on asynchronous discussion boards in the online environment. Curriculum-aligned Socratic questions not only help enhance critical thinking but helps keep all faculty and students focused on course key concepts in a learner-centered environment (Wilberding, 2021). OneNote by Microsoft Office 365 offers an easily accessible, cloud-based solution. The use of a OneNote Notebook not only creates a centralized source of information for all faculty to access but also allows information to be updated by a faculty leader in real-time to streamline communication. Some large academic organizations employ technical teams to make changes within courses via the learning management system rather than course faculty doing that themselves. The use of this cloud-based source of communication and information that is managed by a leader of the course(s) removes the need to involve other organizational teams when an online course is directly edited or changed by technical teams rather than course faculty. Course information that can be included in a Notebook to affect the student experience includes curriculum-aligned Socratic questions for faculty to use on discussion boards, grading guidance for faculty related to new assignments or those assignments with any concern for interrater reliability challenges, or notations of updates to the course(s) from one teaching session to the next. All these opportunities for communication and support not only support the student learning experience but also the faculty efficacy and experience. This method of communication and faculty support has been in use for four sessions impacting an estimated 1000-1500 students and about 20-30 faculty members so far. Faculty have responded positively in great support of this implementation.</p>