Systemic Progress in Teaching and Learning 2005 Award Winners

University of Central Florida

Online@UCF

The University of Central Florida's online learning initiative has had a transformative effect on teaching and learning at this institution of more than 44,000 students. Beginning with a few online courses in 1996 to increase access opportunities for a specific group of students who were spread across the state, Online@UCF today engages approximately 75 percent of the UCF faculty and tens of thousands of students both on and off campus. Clear teaching and learning objectives, articulated in very specific terms, include:

• maintaining quality educational opportunities for all students,
• responding to changing student demographics,
• increasing access to higher education for students in the UCF service region who require and/or desire the flexibility that online courses provide,
• developing a community of faculty whose goals are to deliver highly interactive, learner-centered, student-engaged, and pedagogically sound online courses.

Today, the initiative encompasses 14 online degree programs and hundreds of hybrid and Web-enhanced courses (over 3,200 online courses overall), and cumulatively generates more than 12 percent of the university's annual student credit hour production. Student registration in online course sections almost always reaches capacity before face-to-face sections, and students rate their online courses as excellent up to 14 percent more often than they do their face-to-face courses.

The success of UCF's online learning initiative is attributable to close alignment with institutional goals, skillful execution, a faculty-centered approach based on a nationally recognized faculty development process, and continuous, rigorous assessment. Online@UCF is producing strategic benefits for UCF because it improves teaching, enhances student learning, expands access to high demand programs, and helps the university manage growth. According to UCF President John Hitt, "The rapid acceptance of online learning and the resulting qualitative outcomes are transforming teaching and learning at the University of Central Florida."

Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech Web site

• Center for Innovation in Learning (CIL)
• Faculty Development Institute (FDI)
• Graduate Education Development Institute (GEDI)
• Math Emporium

For more than a decade, Virginia Tech has demonstrated a strong campus-wide commitment to improving learning through technology. At this campus serving nearly 28,000 FTE students, focused planning has resulted in a multi-disciplinary culture of technological innovation grounded in a suite of supporting programs that include the Center for Innovation in Learning (CIL), Faculty Development Institute (FDI), Graduate Education Development Institute (GEDI), as well as the well-known and frequently emulated Math Emporium, which traces its roots to early FDI workshops.

Today, 85 percent of the university academic departments participate in online distance education. More than 90 percent of the faculty have participated in Faculty Development Institute programs, leading to more than 100 course transformation projects over the past five years through grants totaling more than $3.1 million. The Math Emporium alone serves 6,000 students each semester. Among the many outcomes of Virginia Tech's efforts are:

• A climate of faculty champions engaging colleagues across departmental and disciplinary boundaries to share successful teaching and learning strategies;
• An increase in active learning and constructive collaboration among students and between students and faculty;
• Valuable assessment data and tools from the Math Emporium and other initiatives which have proved to be replicable models in other disciplines as well as at other institutions;
• Expansion of innovative instructional efforts even through an era of near-continuous budget constraints, thanks to coordinated management of resources.

Overall, this exemplary set of activities at Virginia Tech have expanded the university's leadership role in the effective integration of instructional technology with pedagogy and enable the university to serve as a model and a resource for other institutions across the state and the nation.

This award is sponsored by Web CT, An EDUCAUSE Gold Partner.