Page 33 - Campus Technology, January/February 2020

graphics and videos; Loom and Screencast-O- Matic, for screencasting to create instructional videos; and ProctorU, for online proctoring of exams and student identity verification.
As Kelli Nakamura, an assistant professor in history and a member of the first TOPP cohort, described, “We participate in the course and at the same time we’re paralleling it, modifying it and creating our own course, utilizing those kinds of skills.” For example, she noted, “we’ll use the lesson pages and try to replicate it.” The same goes for discussion boards, videos, open-ended questions and other instructional activities.
The instructional design team (now grown to two and a half people) has access to the courses as they’re under development to provide immediate and continuous feedback, said Torigoe. Likewise, there’s a lot of sharing within the faculty cohort, such as in the area of course planning, to help spark a “learning community of practice.”
By the time the TOPP training is done, the instructors have gained an understanding of best practices for online course development, a better grasp of instructional design principles, access to others who are doing the same kind of work they’re doing, and actual course content. That last element is what has made the “real difference” from other training courses, Nakamura emphasized. “We [come out of it with] something that we’re going to literally be using either the next semester, in a few weeks or the following semester after that.”
NO TEACHER LEFT BEHIND
Early on, TOPP drew in enthusiasts such as Nakamura, “who were anxious to improve themselves, improve their courses and take anything that was available to them,” said
Kapiolani Community College
Category: Teaching & Learning
Institution: Kapi‘olani Community College
Project: Teaching Online Prep Program (TOPP) and Teaching Equivalencies (TEs)
Project lead: Helen Torigoe, instructional designer; Youxin Zhang, instructional designer; and Jamie Sickel, instructional designer
Tech lineup: Adobe, Flipgrid, Loom, Padlet, ProctorU, Sakai, Screencast-O-Matic, Zoom
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