Designing Effective Online Courses: Exploring the Relationships Amongst Online Teaching Self-efficacy, Professional Development, Online Teaching Experience, and Reported Implementation of Effective Higher Education Online Course Design Practices

How best to prepare and support higher education faculty to design and teach effective online courses is a topic of great significance to higher education institutional leaders and faculty developers. This study explored how hours of professional development along with online teaching and learning experiences were related to online teaching self-efficacy and the extent to which participants reported implementation of effective online course design practices. Using a non-experimental quantitative correlational explanatory research study design, data were collected using a questionnaire. Participants included 104 online faculty from a large public higher education system located in the upper Midwest that includes both community colleges and universities. The findings suggested that both online teaching self-efficacy and self-reported ratings of implementation of effective online course design practices were higher when individuals have completed at least 20 hours of professional development meant to prepare them to teach online, have experience as an online instructor and/or online learner, and have participated in a peer review of their online course. The findings offer insights into how those with varying levels of online teaching self-efficacy rate their online course design practices and suggest that faculty may not accurately self-assess their course design abilities. The results and implications for those who are planning for and providing professional development meant to prepare faculty to teach online are discussed.https://red.mnstate.edu/ijgll-infographics/1009/thumbnail.jp

Designing Effective Online Courses: Exploring the Relationships Amongst Teaching Self-efficacy, Professional Development, Faculty Experience, and Implementation of Effective Online Course Design Practices

How best to prepare and support faculty to design and teach effective online courses is a topic of great significance to higher education institutional leaders and faculty developers. This research project was motivated by several research questions that were formulated to explore how specific demographic characteristics including online teaching experience, hours of professional development completed, gender, institution type, whether or not the participant has participated in a Quality Matters official course review, and whether or not the participant had experience as an online student were related to online teaching self-efficacy and the extent to which participants reported implementation of effective online course design practices. Using a non-experimental sequential quantitative correlational explanatory research study design, data were collected using a questionnaire and a course review component. Participants included 104 online faculty from a large public higher education system located in the upper Midwest that includes both community colleges and universities. The study also included an external review of six online courses. The findings suggested that both online teaching self-efficacy and self-reported ratings of implementation of effective online course design practices were higher when individuals have completed at least 20 hours of professional development meant to prepare them to teach online, have participated in a Quality Matters official course review, have experience as an online learner, and have experience as an online instructor. The findings offer insights into how those with varying levels of online teaching self-efficacy rate their online course design practices and suggest that faculty may not be able to accurately self-assess their course design abilities. Specific findings related to a subset of participants who were new to teaching online due to the COVID-19 pandemic are included. The results, implications for those who are planning for and providing professional development meant to prepare faculty to teach online, and future research are discussed

Designing Effective Online Courses: Exploring the Relationships Amongst Online Teaching Self-efficacy, Professional Development, Online Teaching Experience, and Reported Implementation of Effective Higher Education Online Course Design Practices

How best to prepare and support higher education faculty to design and teach effective online courses is a topic of great significance to higher education institutional leaders and faculty developers. This study explored how hours of professional development along with online teaching and learning experiences were related to online teaching self-efficacy and the extent to which participants reported implementation of effective online course design practices. Using a non-experimental quantitative correlational explanatory research study design, data were collected using a questionnaire. Participants included 104 online faculty from a large public higher education system located in the upper Midwest that includes both community colleges and universities. The findings suggested that both online teaching self-efficacy and self-reported ratings of implementation of effective online course design practices were higher when individuals have completed at least 20 hours of professional development meant to prepare them to teach online, have experience as an online instructor and/or online learner, and have participated in a peer review of their online course. The findings offer insights into how those with varying levels of online teaching self-efficacy rate their online course design practices and suggest that faculty may not accurately self-assess their course design abilities. The results and implications for those who are planning for and providing professional development meant to prepare faculty to teach online are discussed

The Transvestite Adventure: Reading the Colonial Grotesque

This reading of transvestic performance in Australian fiction is in dialogue with Robert Dixon’s 1995 monograph Writing the Colonial Adventure: Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction, 1875-1914. It is informed by the frameworks Dixon developed in his analysis of the relationship between literature and culture, specifically the ways in which he relates the occult effects of the literary imaginary and the political unconscious to historical context and their implication in the formation of Australia’s particular colonialism. More specifically still, the argument regarding colonial transvestism engages directly with Dixon’s deployment of Peter Stallybrass and Allon White’s formulation of the ‘grotesque’ and its application to the Australian colonial context. The essay revisits Dixon’s reading of the Australian grotesque as a critical optic for reading Australian colonial narratives of female to male cross-dressing to argue that the transvestite figures in colonial narratives enact performances of what Stallybrass and White schematise as the two orders of the grotesque, which are enacted in the identity formation of the collectiv

Jules Laforgue: a legacy of paradox

The two volumes of poetry, "L'Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune"(1885) and "Des Fleurs de Bonne Volont6"(1886) by Jules Laforgue are the subject of this commentary. The study involves an examination of background, content, themes and structure. Part One, Background, covers Laforgue's life from January 1885 to June 1866. The artistic context of his work is discussed with reference to the practices of the Parnassian poets and "decadents", Impressionism, the philosophy of the Unconscious based on the treatise by Eduard von Hartmann and the newly founded science of psychology. From these influences Laforgue is shown to establish an artistic theory of paradox, ephemerality, and the commonplace. Part Two, Content, explains Laforgue's imagery: sun and moon symbolism; the original Imagery surrounding schoolgirls, Sundays and urban life; the figures of Pierrot and Hamlet. The discussion presents each symbol as an illustration of paradox. Part Three, Themes, analyses thematic elements: the philosophy of the Unconscious, women, love and sexuality and psychology. The paradoxes evident in Laforgue's presentation of each theme are explored: optimism and pessimism, misogyny and feminism and the conflict between appearance and reality in human psychology. Part Four, Structure, describes Laforgue's versification as the final step in the use of conventional forms before the exploitation of free verse. The clash between the obvious importance of the formal patterns, alongside an apparent lack of concern for form, is interpreted as a further reinforcement of Laforgue's vision of paradox

The Incidence of Chagas Coinfections Amongst Acute Dengue Patients in Machala, Ecuador

Dengue fever is a febrile illness found throughout the tropics that, in severe cases, can be deadly. The most rapidly spreading of any mosquito-borne disease, dengue is re-emerging as an illness of great concern in Latin America and around the globe. The CDC estimates that as many as 400 million cases of dengue occur each year. The pathogenesis of dengue virus is complicated and acts through modulation of the host immune system. Dengue polarizes the immune system balance of T helper 1 (Th1) and T helper 2 (Th2) cells towards a Th1 inflammatory response. Parasitic infections have also been shown to affect the Th1/Th2 balance of the immune response, although how these immunological changes alter the severity of dengue during possible coinfections has yet to be explored. One of the most common parasitic infections in Latin America is Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease. Like dengue, T. cruzi polarizes the Th1/Th2 balance of its host. By triggering a Th2 response, Chagas disease may counteract the Th1 response caused by dengue thereby masking dengue symptoms, increasing the frequency of asymptomatic infections and leading to underreporting of dengue in regions where Chagas is common. In order to begin to examine the effect of parasites on dengue pathogenesis, this study examined the incidence of Chagas disease and T. cruzi/DENV coinfections in Machala, Ecuador. The sample set used for this study was collected as part of a larger dengue study in Machala by SUNY Upstate Medical University. The incidence of Chagas was 3.1% (n=360) and that of T. cruzi/DENV coinfections was 0.6%. The average age of Chagas positive individuals was 50 and 81.8% were female. As this study was a preliminary screening, a larger study should be undertaken in order to better access the T. cruzi/dengue situation in Machala and to further the knowledge base of the immune response to dengue via analysis of the effects of coinfections on disease progression

Elizabeth Harrower: Critical Essays

2014 saw the long-awaited first publication of Elizabeth Harrower’s final novel, 'In Certain Circles', written nearly four decades earlier and withdrawn by the author shortly before its scheduled publication by Macmillan in 1971. This belated publication itself enacted a form of literary revival, not least in bearing the impress of international endorsement in the form of a “Rediscovering Harrower” essay by James Wood in the New Yorker. Just ahead of this publication, Harrower said in an interview with Susan Wyndham that part of the reason she withdrew the novel from publication might have had to do with the death of her mother, which had left her “frozen” with grief; she also claimed to have forgotten the novel, and to be no longer interested in it, or in her writing life, or indeed in writing at all