Online Teaching Support and Professional Growth Opportunities

Hello, all!

Whew! You’ve just about made it to mid-semester. As you begin thinking about finishing fall well and looking ahead to another semester online in the spring, I want to remind you of various ways you can get support and enhance your professional knowledge and practice in online education.

Collegial Mentoring Available!

If you’d like to connect with a faculty colleague for any kinds of questions about online teaching – from getting a quick answer to a head-scratcher, to a more comprehensive conversation about effective practices and/or a walkthrough of a course – we have a dozen folks ready to help. Just fill out the form to request a mentor.

Career Education Faculty – Would you like professional instructional design support?

A strong workforce grant has given our CE faculty access to an outstanding instructional design expert, who has been working with many MiraCosta faculty for more than a year. She can help you with online course design guidance/advice and she can also work directly to make enhancements to your course(s), if you desire. Just reply to this email indicating interest and I will get you connected.

CE Faculty may also be interested in the Developing and Strengthening Online Career Education: The CVC-OEI Improving Online CTE Pathways Speaker Series featuring CE discipline-specific and general online teaching webinars later in October and November.

Interested in Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Adopting OER is a great way to support equity by lowering course material costs, and through greater flexibility to teach a course the way you think students will learn best, rather than being tied to the organization of a traditional textbook. Over 340 MiraCosta fall classes are listed in SURF as Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC)– that is awesome! Want to get more involved with OER?

  • MiraCosta still has grant funds available to provide stipends, timesheet-based compensation, and/or instructional designer expertise to support efforts to reduce course material costs by at least 30% through the adoption of OER and other no-cost course material. Please reply to me if you would like to learn more.
  • The statewide Academic Senate (ASCCC) has great resources available via the ASCCC OERI website, as well as a Canvas site (tinyurl.com/ASCCC-OpenEd) with more informal sharing of discipline-oriented information.
  • The ASCCC is recruiting discipline faculty to support OER advocacy efforts by serving as Discipline Leads. “Our intent is to expand our discipline collections during the fall 2020 term and to increase our targeted advocacy efforts across all identified disciplines in the spring 2021 term. In order to meet these goals, we are now seeking Discipline Leads for disciplines that have never had a Lead and we will be seeking new Leads for the disciplines that have had a Lead previously. Read more about the disciplines we are recruiting, the Discipline Lead role, and the application process.”
  • Register for Copyright, Fair Use, and Piracy. Where does OER Fit In?webinar from ASCCC this Friday, Oct. 16 at 3 pm.
  • The Open Education Global conferenceis online Nov. 16-20. MiraCosta is an OEGlobal member, making your registration just $25.

Additional Upcoming Events, Courses, and Recorded Workshops

  • Check out our comprehensive set of recordings of past MiraCosta Online Education workshops. Viewing workshop recordings is always Flex-eligible.
  • FACCC is holding a statewide “Future of Distance Education” event on Friday afternoon, Oct. 23.See details and register.
  • @ONE provides comprehensive online teaching courses for CCC faculty. New courses are starting soon – check out what’s available. Departmental travel funds can potentially be used to pay for your registration in these courses; if you don’t have access to such funds please reach out to me for support from the Online Education budget.

What Additional Training Opportunities Would You Like?

As you think about your needs over the next few months in finishing out fall and preparing for spring, what kinds of training and support are you looking for? Please reply to me with any requests/suggestions. I will be collaborating with Sean Davis, Joyful Teacher in Residence, to plan online teaching workshops over the next two months.

Jim Julius, Ed.D.
Faculty Director, Online Education