2017-18 Annual Report
STUDENTS
Up 1% from FY17
COURSES
Total of 762 sections
STUDENT CREDIT HOURS
Up 8% from FY17
STUDENT SERVICES
NANOOKS WORLDWIDE
UAF eCampus supports Schools and Colleges as they serve students across the state, country and throughout the world. This year, UAF had active online students in 29 countries plus military service members in Europe and Asia. Nanooks are located in all 50 states (plus Washington D.C.) and in more than 250 communities around the state of Alaska.
AIR FORCE PARTNERSHIP
UAF has partnered with the Community College of the Air Force (CCAF), a federally chartered degree-granting institution that serves enlisted airmen. As part of the General Education Mobile (GEM) program, airmen around the world can now use UAF’s online courses to fulfill the CCAF’s Associate in Applied Science general education requirements. Learn more.
TUITION AWARD DOLLARS
UAF eCampus awarded 60 students $500 tuition awards for summer courses.
ONLINE ORIENTATION
UAF designed and launched an innovative online orientation for new students who can’t attend the traditional in-person orientation. Ronnie Houchin, of UAF Admissions, and UAF eCampus collaborated on the website to ensure that all incoming students (face-to-face or online) have the same tools for success. The self-paced orientation, which features videos, games, quizzes and interactive modules, was available for students who started classes in spring 2018.
EXAMS PROCTORED
UAF eCampus staff proctors exams in the on-campus Exam Center for UAF students and others in the area needing proctoring services. They also help arrange proctors for UAF students who are outside of Fairbanks.
The eCampus Exam Center proctored more than 600 exams during finals week in the spring semester alone.
DEPARTMENT SUPPORT
NATIONAL RANKINGS
For the third year in a row, online programs at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have received national recognition from U.S. News & World Report, which evaluates degree-granting programs at regionally accredited institutions. In 2018, UAF’s online programs earned spots on the following lists:
- Best Online Bachelor’s Programs
- Best Online MBA Programs
- Best Online Criminal Justice Programs (Graduate)
- Best Online Education Programs (Graduate)
NEW INUPIAQ WEBSITE
QaÄ¡Ä¡un Zibell, a graduate student in the School of Education, built a website to help students, both at UAF and around the world, learn basic Inupiaq. Zibell’s work was completed as part of a summer graduate fellowship through UAF eCampus and in partnership with instructor Ron Brower. Learn more.
UAF’s growing list of online minors
| Art |
| Applied Accounting |
| Accounting |
| Communication |
| Emergency Management |
| Applied Business |
| Digital Journalism |
| General Business |
| Computer Information Technology |
| Foreign Languages: Spanish |
| Leadership |
| Paralegal Studies |
| History |
| Management & Organizations |
| Justice |
| Marketing |
| Political Science |
| Psychology |
| Sociology |
NEW COURSES
COURSES IN DEVELOPMENT
PRE-SEMESTER COURSE CHECKS
FACULTY DEVELOPMENT
UAF eCampus instructional designers host open lab hours every week, online and in person, for instructors to get one-on-one assistance. A total of 537 open lab hours were offered this year.
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433 open lab hours at eCampus
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78 virtual open lab hours
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26 open lab hours at CTC
Full calendar of faculty development events.
OPEN EDUCATION
Instructional designers created a new website featuring information about Open Education Practices and Open Education Resources (OER) across the globe. The website, open.uaf.edu, will eventually become a place for UAF faculty to share links to their open courses, content and resources. Prospective students looking for faculty who use OER in their courses instead of costly textbooks may also find this site of interest. Learn more about open education.
MEDIA STUDIO UPGRADES
The Media Studio produced more than 430 videos this year in support of 30 courses. To better support faculty needs and student expectations, the studio upgraded to end-to-end 4K production workflow.
Explore more of the videos on the showcase channel.
Media Studio Producers
Contributions from our talented student employees, all film majors, have helped faculty create high-quality content for their courses. A few examples:
- Buck Barbieri helped Mingchu Zhang produce 29 in-lab videos showing proper laboratory procedures in soil science. Watch part of the series.
- Mika McCrary created motion graphics to help Andrea Bersamin explain how to calculate prevalence. Watch it come to life.
- Joe Yates shot and edited the eight-video series for the brand new online orientation, helping new students prepare for college life. View the playlist.
Quality Matters (QM) is an international, US-based nonprofit organization that is recognized as a leader in quality assurance for online education.
Twelve UAF courses successfully went through formal peer review by experts outside of the University of Alaska system to earn Quality Matters certification in 2017-18. This brings the university’s total to 21 courses with formal reviews. Six additional courses have completed internal peer reviews.
Ten UAF eCampus staff members have earned Quality Matters certifications (a total of 34 unique certifications) to better support faculty as they improve courses and programs. Learn more about Quality Matters at UAF.
Courses that have completed formal peer reviews:
- Assessment of Students with Exceptionalities (EDSE F610)
- Curriculum, Management and Strategies I: Low Incidence (EDSE F612)
- Curriculum, Management and Strategies II: High Incidence (EDSE F622)
- Teaching Mathematics to Special Learners (EDSE F625)
- English Language Arts Assessment, Curriculum and Strategies for Special Learners (EDSE F677)
- Special Education Clinical Practice (EDSE F680)
All 15 courses in the special education program have completed internal course reviews by QM-certified UAF eCampus staff.
Courses that have completed formal peer reviews:
- Corporate Strategy (BA F462)
- Leading Change (BA F472)
- Corporate Strategy (MBA F690)
Courses that have completed formal peer reviews:
- Communicating Ethics (COJO F300X)
- Introduction to Addictive Processes (JUST F125X)
- Research Methods (JUST F222)
QUALITY COURSES START HERE
Expanding Pedagogies, Innovative Courses (EPIC) is a cohort-based program that supports UAF instructors building and delivering online courses. Fourteen instructors from 10 disciplines completed the two-semester long program, designing and teaching creative and robust online and hybrid courses to over 180 UAF students.
A cohort of nine teachers began the program last spring and will deliver their courses this fall with continued support from each other and UAF eCampus.
EPIC Courses
These courses were designed or revised and then open for enrollment in 2017-18:
- AIS 324
- ART 163, 261X, 365
- CCS F693/COJO F493
- COJO 141X, 462
- ENGL 485
- FLPA 200X
- JUST 251X
- PRT 140
- PS 202
- SOC 202, 280
- WRTG 214X
CITE Fellows, a partnership between the Office of the Chancellor and UAF eCampus, is an annual program that supports and enables dedicated teaching faculty to innovate in the fields of online education and technology in the classroom. Chosen faculty are nominated by their deans, department chairs or former CITE Fellows and supported by a team of instructional designers.
REIMAGINING A LAB COURSE
Stefanie Ickert-Bond, professor of botany, delivered a one-credit online course, Intro to Alaska Flora, that encouraged students to explore flora in their own community. Students documented plant specimens using cameras on their smartphones then contributed their observations to iNaturalist, an online platform for collecting field observations and crowdsourcing identifications. They also conducted plant dissections. Course materials and student contributions can be found on the class website.
INCREASING PUBLIC ACCESS
Derek Sikes, professor of entomology, is increasing access to the 110,000 specimens in the Kenelm Philip’s Lepidoptera collection by creating a website with a digital version of the largest private collection of Arctic butterflies in the world. The historical contextualization of this collection will be unique in the field of lepidoptery.
UAF eCampus staff members presented at conferences across the country in 2017-18. Their expertise is helping to improve the online education experience for tens of thousands of students and their insights are highly sought after. Feedback included: “Very different and quirky – totally enjoyed it!!!” and “Great job facilitating audience participation.”
BRIGHTON BROOKS
UAF eCampus’s academic advisor presented to more than 100 people in Saint Louis, Missouri, about the potential benefits and pitfalls of engaging in slang and texting with students using sociological theories as frameworks. Brighton will be hosting a webinar version in December 2018.
SEAN HOLLAND
Sean, a Google for Education certified trainer and instructional designer, with Abel Bult-Ito, professor of neurobiology and anatomy, shared their efforts to create a replicable, unique model for scalable online research lab courses at the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Accelerate conference in Orlando, Florida.
JENNIFER MOSS
Jennifer, a certified Quality Matters peer reviewer and instructional designer, highlighted a new online Gwich’in language and culture course at the Yukon Flats Indigenous Language Revitalization Institute in Fort Yukon, Alaska. The course was created in partnership with the Interior Alaska Campus.
KENDELL NEWMAN SADIIK
Kendell, a UAF eCampus instructional designer, and Jennifer Tilbury, an associate professor in UAF’s Community & Technical College, presented at the Conference on Community Writing in Boulder, Colorado, about developing “high-touch’ online and hybrid courses for students who may need extra support. They shared their design of Introduction to College Writing (WRTG F110).