The Rowan University forum on online degree programs took place in the Eynon Ballroom on March 27. The CEO of Rowan Online and Chief Transformation Officer, Michael Roark, Ph.D, hosted the event, and a few guest speakers from the college also provided information. The forum aimed to provide professors with insight on how to translate in-person courses to an online format.

Roark provided a thorough overview of the program, interwoven with questions and framed by group discussions at both the beginning and end. Provost Anthony Lowman co-hosted the majority of the presentation.

According to Roark, the North American Building Trades Union (NABTU) recently partnered with Rowan Online in a bold move that could potentially attract three million apprentice and employee students.

 “A lot of these people, they’re putting down hammers one day and picking up a keyboard next, and that’s not exactly our traditional student body, and that’s…why you need a Rowan Online,” said Roark.  “As Rowan grows, our alumni grow, our brand grows. We’ve had students apply and come from all the states to attend on campus, but as you start to get that national recognition, you also want to be able to bring the students who can’t come on campus but still want that education.”

Rowan is among the top 100 public schools in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report. Roughly 1,700 students are already enrolled in completely online programs, and 11,628 take at least one online class per semester.

One of the challenges, Leslie Spencer, Ph.D, a professor of health education, says Rowan Online faces in creating online programs is that it’s very difficult to evaluate online professors’ performance.

“What do you evaluate?… They’re not lecturing. They didn’t create the content…and the other challenge is that any communication that they have with students outside of the [Canvas] shell, which is probably most…you don’t see it. If they have a Zoom meeting, if they have a telephone conversation, if they have an email exchange, you don’t see that, and…that’s probably what’s at the heart of…effective teaching online,” said Spencer.

Spencer talked about how they might approach new ideas for measuring faculty success, including how often the students log in, the length of time they stay logged in, how frequently they engage in the activities, the speed of reply to student emails or messages, and the professors’ length of reply.

“This doesn’t require an additional step to engage with students…it is data that we currently have and that we haven’t been utilizing,” said Spencer.

She also suggested that some of the data regarding professor evaluations should be publicly available. It soon became apparent, though, that not every professor was on board with the new metrics.

“This makes me more than a little uncomfortable. We’ve known for 20 years that student evaluations are not really a good way of measuring…faculty success. This [new metric] is considerably clunkier,” said Nathan Bauer, Ph.D, the department chair for the Department of Philosophy & World Religions.

University Senate President Bill Freind, Ph.D, also raised some concerns about potential difficulties with courses offered on Rowan Online.

“Creating a good online class requires a significant amount of work: we need faculty who understand both the subject matter and online pedagogy, as well as staff who understand the technology,” said Freind. “Many faculty aren’t sure what state-of-the-art classes look like. That’s something we need to do a better job of articulating and demonstrating.”

Freind also mentioned issues related to academic integrity from students.

“That’s a challenge. Academic dishonesty appears to be much higher in online classes than in face-to-face classes, and it’s hard to keep up with the technology that facilitates that,” said Freind.

In the end, the professors universally agreed that another forum was needed because there were far too many unanswered questions. Roark and Lowman wholeheartedly agreed. The date hasn’t been set yet, but the forum for more clarity into what an online degree program looks like is on the horizon.

For comments/questions about this story DM us on Instagram @thewhitatrowan or email news@thewhitonline.com