Problems & Solutions in Course Development Support & Tracking

Steve Gance, Ph.D.Maria Del Rocio Nava Rodriguez, MS

About Us

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Online Learning Services (OLS) is composed of a group of full-time and part-time staff and students led by Associate Provost Dr. Mark Jenkins. OLS provides comprehensive services to departments and faculty developing online courses. These services include:• Course and program planning• Budget planning and analysis for all aspects of course and program

development• Curriculum and instructional design consultations• Project management of course and program development• Instructional media vetting and production• Course maintenance and redevelopment• Configuration, integration and development of technologies used in

teaching, learning and course development.• Analysis of emerging educational technology

About Us

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Steve Gance:• Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Technology• MA in Software Human Factors, BS in Software Engineering

Steve’s role is to facilitate the design, development and evaluation of elearning programs and courses implemented, supported and/or managed by the department. He helps to integrate technologies and to design supporting systems and processes to make the use of technology efficient and effective.

Maria Maria Del Rocio Nava RodriguezMaria received her Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering from the University of Guadalajara and a Master’s degree in Engineering Management from Portland State.  She has worked as a System Analyst for Hewlett Packard and has successfully designed and deployed various database systems.  Her interests are in data design and task automation.

ContextPortland State University an urban campus with

~ 28,000 students.Partial and fully online courses constitute about

10% of the total courses offered.OLS helps build and manage over 250 partial

and fully online courses per term (80% of partial and full).

OLS services range from building entire courses to consulting with faculty who build their own courses. At minimum, we provide basic configuration and course elements in every course we support.

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Problem:Four years ago: Two IDs

& two student workers managed 30 courses per term.

# courses managed has risen almost ten-fold.

Today, three full-time and a part-time ID track up to 70 courses each with 10 student and part-time workers.

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2007-08

2008-09

2009-10

2010-11

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Partially on-lineFully onlineTotal

Problem:A need for data and analytics on course

development.Expanded course quality efforts required

closer attention to each course.

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We needed a solution that didn’t require a lot of overhead to manage, was easy to use for all IDs and course developers yet would provide sufficient information to program managers and IDs about the status of course development.

Search for Solutions

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Should we buy commercial software that might meet our needs for tracking tasks or should we build our own solution?

Why not project management software?Course development has fits and starts,

multiple contingent tasks and missed deadlines, without dedicated project manager.

Course development projects are often very similar to each other. In contrast, projects, by definition, are one-off.

Some course development is simple; didn’t need overhead of project management.

Any software takes effort to learn; maybe we could build software that supported our current practices.

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What we built: A DB with course infoOnline, hybrid and web-supportedRepeat versus newCourse build statusAbility to associate a course with client,

program manager, faculty and lead IDTime-trackingFlexible search and filtering mechanism

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What worked wellFilter by ID, program manager, client, statusTime tracking in categoriesRich source of data (and the right data)

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What didn’t work so wellStatus not sufficiently detailed to track

details of course developmentStatus cannot indicate breakdowns or cause

of delays

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Enhancements to tracking Developed a specification for a significant

expansion of task tracking. It was brilliant but we balked at the effort.

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Enhancements to tracking Teambox selected, representing a return to

the original question “build or buy?” this time with a different answer

Teambox provides◦Capture of design conversations, minimizing

reliance on email◦File drop box to facilitate exchange of files◦Tasks assigned to faculty, IDs & staff◦Task reminders

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Enhancements to reportingAutomatic notification methods

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InformationDashboard

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Interface Enhancements

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Enhancements to the interface to provide dashboard-based reporting and analytics holds promise to provide an order of magnitude improvement in effectiveness for IDs and university administrators. But severe limitations on resources continue to hamper progress.

For now, we continue to focus on incremental improvements to accomplish what we can with the resources we have.

Contact Information

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Steve Gance, Ph.D.sgance@pdx.edu

Maria Maria Del Rocio Nava Rodriguez, MSnavam@pdx.edu

Mark Jenkins, Ph.D.Associate ProvostOnline Learning Servicesjenkinsm@pdx.edu