Overview of Types of Courses at The American Women’s College

All courses at The American Women’s College (TAWC) use the Canvas learning management system to provide students and instructors access to course content and assessments.  These courses are pre-populated with content and learning activities created by a team of experts – academic program directors, subject matter experts, and instructional designers – to craft the framework of the educational experience.

While the curriculum has already been developed, you will be responsible for creating a presence, engaging students in their learning, and providing valuable feedback to our students through these systems.  This training course is designed to show you a variety of ways in which you can engage your students and foster a successful and rich learning experience.

In this section, we provide an explanation of the types of courses we offer at TAWC and some of the key characteristics of each modality.

Online

• • These courses will use either open educational resources (OER) or traditional publisher based textbook(s).
  • Learning is asynchronous and often an independent process for students, which can be a benefit for many students, but some are also nervous about learning in a manner that is unfamiliar to them.
  • Students will participate in discussions, submit a variety of assignments, and, depending on the course, may take quizzes through the learning management system.
  • Courses may be enhanced with personalized learning software, embedded within Canvas in most cases, or launched to external website(s) through the Canvas course.
  • Initial discussion posts from students are due on Thursday by 11:59 PM EST, with responses to peers due by Saturday at 11:59 PM EST.
  • Quizzes or other summative assignments will be due on Saturday by 11:59 PM EST, and instructors must provide timely and appropriate feedback through Canvas no later than four days after the assignment due date (Wednesday at 11:59 PM EST).
  • To ensure students feel the instructor presence in online classes, instructors are required to post weekly announcements and participate in discussions, per the Faculty Evaluation Rubric.

Virtual Hybrid

• Our hybrid model uses either open educational resources (OER), traditional publisher based textbook(s), or learning software embedded in Canvas, in some cases.
• In the hybrid format, students are required to participate in an online discussion by Thursday at 11:59 PM EST.  This discussion should be monitored and can help inform an instructor’s planning for the in-class activities scheduled for Saturday.
• Virtual hybrid courses are designed to best utilize online, synchronous time by allowing students to work independently with online resources or texts and then providing them with targeted virtual face-to-face experiences.

Courses Using KnowledgePath:

• Includes most aspects of online courses and adds an adaptive platform KnowledgePath, which is a primary source of course content, although some will also use a textbook.
• KnowledgePath assignments are due on Thursday by 11:59 PM EST, prior to the summative assessments, which are due on Saturday, and they should be monitored to fully leverage the analytics of the platform and make targeted interventions.
• KnowledgePath can be used to gain insight into the student’s interactions with the course content in a way that allows early intervention and targeted feedback.
• Insight from the student and class learning maps allows the instructor to outreach and focus on concepts where students may be struggling.