Serendipity35

When I started working with designing online courses in 2000, our focus on readiness for online learning was on students.  Like other colleges at that time, we considered freshman "not ready" for the responsibilities and time management required to take online versions of courses. For a time, the college of computer science at that university didn't want their students taking online courses in their major at all. An opinion that seemed quite ironic.

Unfortunately, there was less concern about whether or not teachers were ready to teach online. It was not unusual for an instructor to come my instructional technology department and say that he or she was told that they were teaching online next semester. At least half of them were not happy about this and were totally new to online learning.

We created several "readiness" quizzes for potential students to take. They were not required and did not block students from registering for an online section. One of the things we felt was the biggest factor for on;line success or failure was time management. For students and teachers, especially in the early years of online learning, there was an idea that being online would give you more free time. In almost every case, the opposite was true. That seemed to be especially true if this was your first experience with being online.

Recently, I saw a blog post that was about the idea of having a readiness quiz/survey for faculty.

There are still these tools online for students, like this one from the University of North Carolina called Online Learning Readiness Questionnaire for Students. It is harder to find similar tools for instructors and faculty planning to teach online. In either case, a quiz would ask about skills needed to be successful. Some are technical - learning to use a learning management system - and the things that are often called "soft skills" that I feel are more important to success, like self-direction and time management,

The aforementioned post shares some surveys and key findings from two papers on ‘readiness’ for online learning and teaching. My own experiences heading up a department of instructional designers and working with faculty would agree with many of the findings given. Though I do feel that instructors must “possess personal attributes to perform online teaching and administration of the online environment successfully“ I know that it is rare for a person to be rejected from teaching online for any such criteria. 

It may have been more true in 2000, but still today I hear that too many teachers want to replicate their on-ground course online. "I always show the class this film. I want to put it online," says the teacher. But, we can't because we don't access to a streaming version or the rights to use it online. "But that's what I always do in class."

“Teaching in an online course involves more than replicating classroom strategies in a different form. It “requires a different approach—one that focuses less on the amount of time students spend together in a particular place, and more on facilitating a distance community and on activities designed for students working individually” (University of Washington, 2004).”

That different approach can be a good thing. An opportunity for real redesign and improvement, but that is not always the result.

The research noted indicates that there isn't very much support for readiness questionnaires leading to better learning outcomes for students (Gascoigne & Parnell, 2014) and I would expect there is even less evidence for significant changes in success from using a "screening" of new faculty.

And yet, I would still encourage the use of these tools for students and faculty. I especially like going through these skills with faculty 1:1 with course designers and technologists if the process has the ability to defer faculty from being online until they are better prepared or even reject the, from teaching online. That would definitely be met with opposition from faculty and departments.

In her post, Debbie Morrison identifies 3 skill sets that need to be considered with faculty.

1.  Technology and Social Media Skills including basic computer skills, proficiency with software applications, features and functions within the LMS (grading tools often baffle newbies) and platforms for communication/engagement outside the LMS from conferencing software (Google Hangouts, WebEx etc.) to using social tools that are quite optional like Twitter, Google+ or Facebook

2.  Administrative and Organization Skills such as time management in quick response to student questions, constructive feedback on student work and in forums, and handling academic integrity issues in new ways.

3. Pedagogical Skills which needs to be much more student-focused online

Morrison provides two surveys that might be useful to look at if you are considering teaching online for the first time or if you are part of the screening process for new online instructors:

Faculty Self Assessment: Preparing for Online Teaching from Penn State University (free to use under the Creative Commons license)

CUNY published on its faculty website an example of a feedback report of the Penn State Self-Assessment

A faculty readiness survey from the University of Toledo is a 20-question self-scoring survey. (UX note: select the radio button that is above the answer you want)