How the Courses Work

Registration will be handled by each student’s home institution. The most common process is for the home institution to register the student in an independent study course, with a faculty member from the student’s major department (or another department, if that is more practical) serving as “instructor-of-record” for the course. This “instructor-of-record” will serve as a point of communication on the student’s home campus, should the Mellon course instructors require any assistance with the student. Instructors-of-record will also submit the final grades for students on their home campuses, after the Mellon course co-teachers email the final grades to the instructors-of-record.

We have found that the time between students’ commitment to participate and the beginning of the course is a “critical period.” Students can be intimidated by the nature of this course. Although they have a partner on their campus, they may not know that person well (or at all), and they don’t know their other classmates, nor are they familiar with the co-teachers’ expectations and teaching styles. Moreover, the distance format and the idea of conducting archival research and/or working with digital tools can be daunting. We have included on the Instructor Checklist some tactics that might help students to feel more at ease, such as the following:

• After students are nominated, the faculty teams should contact student nominees to welcome them to the class.
• After the registration period ends, but before the end of that semester, co-teachers should arrange for a preliminary teleconference with all registered students, to welcome the students, allow them to see and hear one another through the distance technology, and to discuss the logistics and expectations of the course.
• Keep in email contact with students over the break between semesters, and make yourself accessible to them should they have questions.
• Lay out clear expectations in your syllabus and in the first meetings of the class, so that students are not confused about how you will manage your class. Make sure they are aware of your office hours and other ways/times that they can contact you.

Just as you probably already do on your own campus, it is important that your students communicate with you about any accommodations they may need. We have included a paragraph about accommodations in the Course Policies template.  Should students require an ASL interpreter, special reader equipment, or other major accommodation for a physical disability, it is the responsibility of the student’s home institution to provide these services. Each institution will have an office of disability/accessibility resources, and co-teachers should contact that office on the student’s campus if they have any questions.

Grade Submission

The co-teachers for each course will be responsible for assigning grades, based on the expectations laid out in their course rubric. Follow this process for grade submission:

• Make sure that you know when grades are due at each student’s institution (see Instructor Checklist). It is likely that grades will be due at different times for your students—you must stay on top of these deadlines.
• Once the co-teachers have determined each student’s grade, they will send that final grade to the instructor-of-record on each student’s campus. (Note that at least one COPLAC campus does not use the traditional grade system. Instead, instructors will be asked to provide a paragraph-long narrative evaluation of the student’s performance.)

Evaluating Students' Performance

It is up to each co-teaching team to determine the criteria on which to evaluate their students, and to place appropriate weight on each element of the class. However, keep in mind that at the center of the COPLACDigital initiative is the undergraduate research/website/digital tool experience, alongside participation in the synchronous distance class sessions. Therefore, the project should be the most significant component of the course, and class participation should also carry considerable weight. (For the Century America course, for example, the project comprised 50% of the final grade, while class participation represented 35% of the final grade.) We encourage the co-teachers to discuss the criteria and priorities of each class well ahead of the course, and to include specific standards for grading on their syllabus. Jeff and Ellen used a simple spreadsheet and a set of general standards with which to assess their students, using a column of the spreadsheet for each component of the class. Century America 2.0 was comprised of teams of two students from each campus, and we made it clear to the students that they would receive both a team and an individual grade. We used the average of these two grades as the student’s final grade for the course. With the exception of Class Participation, which is, of course, entirely up to the individual, we considered each of the other components from a team and an individual perspective.

Project: This piece, of course, is at the center of the COPLACDigital courses, and therefore should represent the largest percentage of the grade. A detailed rubric for evaluating the research and construction of the website project is located in Appendix B.  The project grade is primarily a team grade, but if one team member's work is markedly better or worse than that of the other team member(s), individual performance could factor into the final grades.

Class Participation: Because of the nature of the class, participation is important, and includes a number of activities beyond simply showing up and contributing to the conversation during class sessions. Participation also includes consistent blogging, replying to classmate blogs and responding to classmates’ requests for technical help or research advice, completion of mini-assignments, and providing articulate, thoughtful and thorough oral updates on team progress throughout the semester. This grade is, of course, an individual grade, and each student should be evaluated independently of their team member with regard to their contributions to the class. Because participation is such an important part of this class, it should represent a significant portion of each student’s final grade.

Final Presentation: The final presentation allows students to practice organizing and presenting their work, in this particular case, to a remote audience. This piece can be considered from an individual and a team perspective.

• Team Questions: Did the overall presentation provide a clear, thorough and well-organized overview of the project? Did the overall presentation address all of the issues that the co-teachers asked students to cover? Did the team members present in a well-organized and seamless manner? Did their presentation give the impression that they planned who would present on what aspects of the project? Did their presentation give the impression that they rehearsed together? Was the presentation time and content divided equitably between/among the team members?

• Individual Questions: Was each team member’s individual presentation well-organized? Did each team member give the impression that they thoroughly scripted and rehearsed their individual piece of the presentation? Did they ramble or leave out important information?

Contract: Part of each student’s/student team’s grade included the degree to which they fulfilled their website contract. The goal of this piece was to help students practice effective collaboration. Drafting their own contract, negotiating the terms of the contract, and monitoring their progress on contracted obligations will help students learn about the process of creating realistic goals, communicating progress on goals to one another and to their “clients,” and reassessing those goals at regular intervals.

• Team Questions: Did each team meet or exceed the goals that they set out in the contract? If they encountered a problem that required them to reassess their goals, did they work with the co-teachers to make appropriate adjustments to the contract?

• Individual Questions: Did each individual on the team meet their obligations as laid out in the contract? Did team members communicate with one another and with the co-teachers about progress on their goals? When they encountered a problem, did they collaborate with their team members and co-teachers to help make appropriate adjustments to their goals as outlined in the contract?

Other Course Components: If there are other assignments or components of your course that you wish to include, you may do so. Just keep in mind that students will need considerable time and space to conduct research, learn the digital technology, and construct their websites. So, for their sanity—and yours—we encourage you to keep the course assignments simple and directly-related to the central website project.

Because UNC Asheville’s Distance Learning Services will be providing teleconference support for most or all of the classes, we will need to coordinate class times with Greg Dillingham. In order to avoid conflicting or overlapping class times, instructors must consult with Jeff, Ellen, and Greg about potential class times in advance. We will be asking you for preferred class times and alternate preferred times approximately six months prior to the semester in which you are scheduled to teach.

Some considerations as you think about scheduling your course:

• Generally speaking, it works best for courses to be scheduled for meeting twice a week (Monday/Wednesday, Tuesday/Thursday, or even Wednesday/Friday or other combinations of two meetings per week) for one hour and fifteen minutes.
• UNC Asheville’s Distance Learning Services operates on Eastern Time, therefore Eastern Time is the default scheduling time zone for all COPLACDigital courses. Courses should be scheduled between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern Time.
• When teaching, keep in mind that your students will most likely be in several different time zones—you should remind them, particularly at the beginning of the semester, that Eastern Time is the default time zone for the course.

COPLAC schools do not all follow the same schedules or break their academic years into the same divisions (most operate on a semester schedule, but at least one operates on a 15-week trimester schedule). Therefore, it is up to the discretion of the co-teachers to choose the start and end dates for their courses. COPLACDigital seminars must run for a minimum of 14 weeks.