Political Science Professor Keith Shimko has been teaching his Modern Weapons and International Relations course for more than 20 years, growing it from around 50 students every other semester to more than 200 every semester.
The course is popular with undergraduate students from majors all over the West Lafayette campus, in part because it fills a Purdue core requirement – and also because of its instructor. Shimko has repeatedly won awards for his teaching, including induction into Purdue’s Book of Great Teachers in 2014 and the Charles B. Murphy Award, Purdue University's highest award for excellence in undergraduate teaching, in 2016.
What he’s done for the last two decades obviously works. So, he was naturally skeptical about developing an online version of the course. But working with a team from Purdue’s Undergraduate Course Development and Instructional Support Program changed his outlook.
“I just didn't know how, if at all, the class would translate,” Shimko said. “I thought it was going to be an extremely painful process. They made it much more painless than I feared when I started out.”
The West Lafayette faculty members participating in the program are partnered and meet weekly with a Purdue University Online instructional design team in a 16-week development process that includes video production support. The process covers elements ranging from syllabi and assessments to interactivity and accessibility.
Purdue University Online is seeking additional faculty participants from the West Lafayette campus for the program, which is designed to develop, redevelop, or refresh online undergraduate courses aimed at residential students enrolled at West Lafayette.
For more information see this website, or contact Ryne Kerchner, senior program manager, undergraduate programs and compliance, rkerchne@purdue.edu.
One focus of the program is to increase access to high-enrollment courses offered on the West Lafayette campus, electives serving a variety of majors, and undergraduate core curriculum courses – all of which describe Shimko’s course.
Nonetheless, with 400 students a year taking the in-person course, Shimko wondered if there was actually demand for an online version. He also wondered how an online version would affect student outcomes.
Turns out, when he taught the online version for the first time in the spring semester of 2023, 125 students enrolled, the maximum allowed in the online section, and the in-person course still drew nearly 200 students.
In addition, students’ grades in the online and in-person versions of the course were nearly identical and in line with grades in the course historically, and student reviews of the online version were generally positive.
Under the program, new undergraduate courses also can be developed to reduce time-to-degree and ease demand on physical spaces with limited capacity. Courses to facilitate “Degree in 3” plans of study or that lead to options for students to pursue an entire minor online are eligible as well.
Purdue University Online offers development funding to sponsoring departments on the West Lafayette campus along with funding for three semesters of instructional support for courses that meet certain criteria.
The instructional design teams assigned to work with faculty members in the program bring pedagogy and technology expertise to the table and assist in logistics and project management. The goal is to conceptualize and deliver an online course with clear learning objectives packaged in a logical, accessible, aesthetically pleasing structure, and featuring interactive, hands-on and collaborative touches.
Shimko and Alexus Maschinot, a senior instructional designer for Purdue University Online, said a major task was converting Shimko’s lectures, which can run for an hour in person, to the approximately 10- to 12-minute segments that work best for online learning. They worked to identify and incorporate the key points and expanded on those with supplemental readings offline. Shimko said the process prompted him to modify what he emphasizes in his in-person lectures somewhat as well.
“One of the good things for me was that it did force me to revisit those lectures in a way that I have not in quite some time," Shimko said. “I had to make economizing choices about what from my lectures would go into those videos. You really had to focus on what was absolutely essential for students to learn and less on things you bring in to help them keep their attention in class.”
Maschinot, who headed the team that worked with Shimko, also found ways to make the online course more interactive and engaging, including a series of mini group projects that required the students to work together on understanding the content, pictures and short video clips illustrating the material, and even complementary background music. Shimko began with doubts but ended up pleased with the results.
“When I started the project, I would never have imagined it would look that good,” Shimko said. “Part of it is what I did. A large part of it is what they did. They worked very hard on it. The good thing is, the next time I teach online it's going to be much less work, you're going to go in and tinker with a few things, update a few things, but 90 percent of the work is done.”