Evidence of an instructor’s academic engagement with students can take many forms. This might include engagement in discussion boards, assignment feedback, and other instructional presence in the course. Information about the standards of instruction is found in Section 4 below.
Online faculty do not hold any rank apart from their full-time status. When a full-time faculty member applies for promotion, their work as an online faculty member in support of KYSU Online/Global is one component of their portfolio. The primary duties of full-time faculty are oriented toward the residential campus and degree programs. For this reason, the workload completed as an online faculty member for KYSU Online/Global is not a significant factor in faculty rank and promotion decisions for full-time faculty.
Online faculty members who hold rank at another institution can appeal to use their rank and title at KYSU Online/Global. Appeals should be directed to the Office of Online Education. No additional compensation or benefits are afforded to faculty who hold rank at another institution. The appeal, if granted, allows academic rank elsewhere to be reflected in the email signature of the adjunct faculty member at KYSU Online/Global.
See 3.1 – Subject Matter Expert (SME) Model for Online Courses for a description of SMEs.
This section presents the Subject Matter Expert model for online courses at KYSU Online/Global. It explains how the SME’s duties relate to different phases of an online course lifecycle. SMEs are integral to the development and redevelopment of online courses; they maintain the primary course shell of online courses; they are responsible for coordinating textbook updates; and they engage with online instructors to drive continuous improvement of online courses.
Since online courses are delivered entirely through the Learning Management System, and since students engage the content asynchronously, the content within the LMS essentially stands in place of the instructional content represented by lectures in a traditional/residential course. Therefore, apart from regular face-to-face interaction with faculty in a classroom setting,
students must encounter a well-designed, easy-to-navigate online course that facilitates their learning. Developing an effective online course is time-consuming and requires more advanced proficiency with the LMS. When multiple sections of the same online course are needed, the student experience can vary greatly depending on the ability of the instructional designer and the amount of time allocated to developing the course in the LMS.
KYSU Online/Global aims to deliver a consistent educational experience to students in different online sections of the same course. Their experience should also remain consistent from term to term, as the general layout and elements of various online courses should be familiar. Moreover,
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