The Whys and Hows of Large Enrollment Online Courses at KSU Tiffani Reardon Instructional Designer Kennesaw State University

The Whys of Large Enrollment at KSU KSU is growing by leaps and bounds Out of space for face-to-face classes and out of faculty to teach them Big pushes to reduce the student debt load Bottlenecks in gen. ed. that delay progression toward graduation

The Hows of Large Enrollment at KSU University-level: Large Enrollment Online Task Force MOOCs College-level: College of Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty Learning Community Pilot Course – African American Literature with 120 students

What we have learned about large enrollment online gen. ed. courses Re-designing the course is a must – we can’t throw 100 students into a course made for 25 Large enrollment isn’t practical in writing-intensive courses Managing faculty workload Maintaining student engagement Alternating group discussions – minimize grading Clear and valuable prompts for discussions Group projects – minimize grading Clear assignment instructions Intelligent agents – you write an email for a specific occasion once, sends when a student triggers it Students feel “seen” because they think you are sending them personal emails Gamification – you create self-grading games and activities that you never have to look at again Students get an engaging way to assess themselves that is also fun!

What we have learned about MOOCs Designing for a global audience helps participants from other cultures stay involved and engaged in the materials throughout the course Explain that instructors are (insert culture) and some references may be unfamiliar to participants, but that the material is applicable in many cultures Offer the opportunity for participants to share differences from their cultures via discussion forum Peer-review works when there a lot of active participants, but not so much when there aren’t enough participants for everyone’s projects to get reviewed Remaining active in the course in small ways makes you more present in the course and helps participants progress

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