Faculty Champions Online Teaching

Published June 24, 2020

Faculty Champions Assist With COB Online Teaching

After President Conoley announced on May 12 that the fall semester would not be offered face-to-face, campus planning for online teaching ramped up. At the university level, Academic Technology Services (ATS), EDTEC (housed in the College of Education), and the Faculty Center are offering webinars, videos, and other teaching support to provide CSULB faculty the skills and tools necessary to enhance and improve online teaching proficiency.

The university is using a “train the trainer” model in which ATS and EDTEC work with a small number of faculty from each college, called Faculty Champions. After receiving training, Faculty Champions will work with faculty members in their colleges in the latter part of summer and throughout the fall semester to develop and offer high-quality online teaching.

COB Faculty Champions

COB has seven Faculty Champions who are excellent teachers in their own right, and they are eager and determined to help all COB faculty members offer high-quality online courses in fall 2020. COB Faculty Champions have already started training, meet repeatedly, are learning new technologies and skills, and are discussing goals and plans for fall semester. They are planning how to help other faculty in the fall through webinars/group sessions, website posts, and one-on-one sessions with faculty members.

COB Faculty Champions come from across the college: Ping Lin from Accountancy, Jasmin Yur-Austin from Finance, Hongyu Chen from Information Systems, Allison Butler from Legal Studies in Business, Ming Chen and Jeffrey Bentley from Management/HRM, and Christine Kang from Marketing. Students consistently rate their teaching highly, and COB Faculty Champions are ready to help create excellent teaching effectiveness in the online mode.

Survey results

During the spring semester, students and faculty were surveyed about their perceptions of spring 2020 online teaching. Nearly 900 students responded (18% response rate) while 117 faculty responded (67% response rate). Survey results will be useful in creating excellent online offerings for the fall semester.The main focus right now is creating first-rate fall online courses, but this investment in online teaching proficiency can have long-term benefits, too.

The post-COVID-19 world is likely to permanently have a greater online/remote/virtual dimension in every part of our lives, and all COB programs will likely have an online component post-COVID-19. This will push COB to the forefront of relevant and up-to-date management education in Southern California.