Office of Online Learning
When it comes to innovation at Southern Adventist University, one department stands out from the rest. It’s no surprise this department is the Office of Online Learning. With a total enrollment of 242 students in 22 different online classes this fall semester, it is clear to see that the department is doing something right.
Pegi Flynt, director of the Online Campus program has worked hard for three years to obtain the program’s multifaceted status. She describes her position as directing a small team, that is in charge of developing online courses, so that students at a distance, or students on campus who have schedule conflicts, can access their course, complete their course online, submit materials online, communicate with their professor and the other students in the web environment.
Flynt explains that what the department has accomplished is not particularly innovative when compared to other online courses, but has been very innovative in relation to current strategies on Southern’s campus.
“There are some incredibly good models of distance education happening across the world, and its been happening for decades,” Flynt said. “Just because we’ve come on to the scene now in the last three years, we’re understanding distance education on our campus much better.”
Learn more about VCAM courses
There are a couple different types of classes offered online. The first kind are called VCAM classes, which are conducted over a video conferencing system and follow a more traditional classroom approach. They meet at set times, and the instructor lectures much like in a regular classroom.
The second kind is more self contained, and is based around pre-recorded video or narrated powerpoint lectures. Elisa Adeogun, academic advisor for online students, is involved in building and editing these courses.
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“It’s a lecture just like you would get in the classroom, except you can watch it online. And then you’ll still have your quizzes and written assignments. But the core component of the course would be a video or audio lecture from the professor himself,” Adeogun said.
Building a course is a lengthy process. According to Adeogun, it can take a long time to build a course. The first step involves the professor putting all the course content together, followed by editing of the content. The last step involves preparing any technical elements, such as videos, interactive elements, or building quizzes and tests.
Ivan Delgado, support supervisor for the Office of Online Learning, takes care of all the technical issues involving online courses as well as maintaining Eclass, Southern’s class management system. Delgado described Eclass as a repository for teachers to put files up for the students that they can review later, or where they can take quizzes or submit assignments. Students can also keep blogs for classes and other students can comment on them.
Delgado is working on improvements to Eclass as well.
“We’ve started integrating TurnItIn into the Eclass management system. We are trying to integrate the video conferencing system into Eclass, so students can just go there, instead of going to a different site,” Delgado said.
The Eclass system has many features that are not used right now by teachers, mostly because they would be very time consuming to set up, but Delgado said the system has a lot of potential, as many features are just waiting to fill a need.