Provost goes extra mile with education

A member of the UCF community is fast becoming one of the go-to gurus in online education.

This year, Joel Hartman, vice provost of information technologies and resources, was honored by the Sloan Consortium with the A. Frank Mayadas Leadership Award in Online Education. The award is presented annually to an individual whose leadership in the online education community has been transformative.

Sloan-C is an association of more than 400 universities and institutions dedicated to integrating online learning into higher education. Hartman received the award at the association's annual conference at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort from Nov. 9-11.

"While these awards are great to have personally, what they really mean is that both our activities at the national and international level and through our individual contributions at the national and international level, UCF has been and is increasingly becoming recognized as probably one of the, if not the, leading institution in terms of our comprehensive online learning initiative – the way we do it, the things we do and the results we obtain from that," Hartman said.

This is only the second year the award has been given out. In 2008, Hartman received the EDUCAUSE Leadership Award for his work and is the only person to hold the leadership awards from both organizations. EDUCAUSE is a non-profit association dedicated to advancing higher education by promoting the use of information technology.

UCF launched its first fully online courses in 1996 and since then has become a leader in the field of online learning. The university and its faculty have won numerous awards for its online learning initiatives and programs.

Along with the recognition that comes with the leadership award, UCF received $2,000 that it plans on using toward scholarships for students enrolled in online courses.

While Hartman serves as the chief information officer at UCF, he gives much of the credit to his award-winning staff. This year, Patsy Moskal, associate director for the research initiative for teaching effectiveness at UCF, was named a Sloan-C fellow. Last year, the initiative's director, Chuck Dziuban, was named a fellow as well.

"The fellowship program was initiated last year," Dziuban said. "It's a way for the Sloan Consortium to recognize people who have had a longstanding contribution locally and nationally to the online learning initiative."

Sloan-C fellows are limited to 1 percent of the Sloan membership each year, and since 1996, both Dziuban and Moskal have operated the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness at UCF.

"Chuck and Patsy together are responsible for the part of our operation that does all the assessment and data collection," Hartman said. "They have accumulated this marvelous set of data that helps understand how online learning works, how to make it work better and how to engage faculty in true scholarship around their activities in online learning. Then they share these results with other institutions so we can contribute to the field."

"Our job is to evaluate the impact of the online and blended courses on UCF, the faculty and the students," Moskal said. "Part of that evaluation is supporting faculty on doing scholarship of teaching and learning research in their classes."

After launching the first online classes back in 1996, Dziuban and Moskal discovered that 75 percent of the students who enrolled in online courses were not distance students but were on campus. This prompted UCF to create the blended, or mixed-mode, format that combines traditional in-class instruction with online learning in 1997.

"Since that time, online learning has grown at a double-digit compound growth rate," Hartman said. "Today, online learning accounts for over 30 percent of the university's total credit hour production."

"The teaching and learning enterprise as a role for the CIO has been steadily rising over the years as a participatory kind of thing," Dziuban said. "The CIO has to be involved in decisions on the efficacy of technology for teaching. They are getting involved in teaching and learning by caveat."

In 2008, UCF received the inaugural Ralph E. Gomory Award for Quality Online Education from Sloan-C under the leadership of Hartman. The award is given to an institution that has demonstrated a commitment to assessing and improving the quality of its online education.