Online Learning Services at Portland State University provides course development support and tracking for over 250 online courses each term using a combination of in-house and third party tools. As the number of courses grew ten-fold, OLS developed an in-house database to track basic course info and time but found it lacked detail on development tasks and statuses. They then implemented Teambox to better facilitate file sharing and task management between instructors, instructional designers, and staff. While reporting and analytics remain limited by resources, OLS continues incremental improvements to support online course development with existing resources.
1. Problems & Solutions in Course
Development Support & Tracking
Steve Gance, Ph.D.
Maria Del Rocio Nava Rodriguez, MS
2. 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
3. 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 Rodriguez
Maria 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.
4. Context
Portland 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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5. 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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0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
Partially
online
Fully
online
Total
6. 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.
7. 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?
8. 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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9. What we built: A DB with course info
Online, hybrid and web-supported
Repeat versus new
Course build status
Ability to associate a course with client,
program manager, faculty and lead ID
Time-tracking
Flexible search and filtering mechanism
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10. What worked well
Filter by ID, program manager, client, status
Time tracking in categories
Rich source of data (and the right data)
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11. What didn’t work so well
Status not sufficiently detailed to track
details of course development
Status cannot indicate breakdowns or cause
of delays
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12. 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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13. 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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16. 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.
17. Contact Information
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Steve Gance, Ph.D.
sgance@pdx.edu
Maria Maria Del Rocio Nava Rodriguez, MS
navam@pdx.edu
Mark Jenkins, Ph.D.
Associate Provost
Online Learning Services
jenkinsm@pdx.edu
