CAIT Description
UO Online will convene a new, stipended CAIT (Community Accelerating the Impact of Teaching) to examine best practices in high enrollment online classes. Through conversations—both within this group and with colleagues in their disciplinary areas—CAIT members will work together to identify scalable practices and to recommend guidelines that 1) increase student engagement and 2) support student learning in high enrollment online classes.
Faculty at the University of Oregon have made tremendous progress over the past three years in expanding and enriching the university’s mission with online courses. Our undergraduates now have the option to take many of their core courses online with all the added flexibility and accessibility that online learning affords them. Online courses can also be powerful learning experiences for students, with all the added possibilities for multi-media expression, creativity, and group work. However, it can be difficult to scale-up the best practices in online learning for high-enrollment courses, where we must balance our goal of promoting creative thinking while also grading hundreds of assignments. And yet high-enrollment courses are pivotal in so many of our undergraduates’ college experience precisely because they occupy crucial, often core subjects within their curriculum. This High Enrollment Online Courses CAIT will focus on how we can leverage the affordances of online learning to overcome scale and close the distance between faculty, GEs, and students in high enrollment online courses.
Application Deadline: October 28, 2022
Duration: AY 2022-2023
Commitment: Monthly meetings
First Meeting: Week of November 14, 2022
Stipend: $1,000
Questions? Contact Tim Sorg (tsorg@uoregon.edu)
CAIT Participation
Members of this CAIT will work together to identify and recommend best practices for teaching high enrollment online courses at the University of Oregon. CAIT members will draw from their own teaching experience, read selected peer-reviewed articles, and survey their colleagues in their academic units to spotlight which practices have been most effective in creating meaningful learning experiences for students in high enrollment courses. By participating in monthly meetings through Spring 2023, CAIT members will join a community of learning and support among faculty who teach high enrollment online courses. The group will meet for an initial kickoff meeting during the week of Nov. 14, 2022, then meet in-person once every month during Winter and Spring Terms.
Participating faculty are expected to:
- Participate in all in-person monthly meetings (about eight in total)
- Read selected peer-reviewed articles on best practices for high enrollment online classes
- Survey their colleagues within their academic unit about their experience with high enrollment online courses
- Identify a specific teaching practice that worked well and share an example with your University of Oregon peers in Canvas Commons
- Collaborate with the CAIT group to compose a White Paper with recommendations for the Office of the Provost
To qualify for the CAIT, applicants must have taught an online course during the past academic year with at least 100 students. CAIT members will receive stipends of $1,000 to acknowledge their participation. To apply, please click "Apply Here!" at the top of the page to fill out the Qualtrics survey by October 28, 2022.
For any questions, please contact Tim Sorg (tsorg@uoregon.edu)