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Campus Review
July 7, 2014
Page 22
“Something” in this case is something dif-
ferent from standard online courses.
While there are many types of online
courses, they typically are highly struc-
tured. But, that’s not the case with a Self-
Paced course.
“We want to expand access to online
course and reduce barriers,” explains
Southard. “So, we removed the structure,
in particular, the intermediate course
deadlines. In fact, the only deadline is the
end of the semester.”
One other unique feature of the course is
the teamwork involved in the develop-
ment process. All of the Political Science
faculty contributed content in construct-
ing the course. Not surprisingly, Southard
will continue working with her colleagues
on the Clayton State faculty to develop
additional SPOC.
Southard points out that at the time
Mohamed, who also has a history in the
online arena, came to her, no one in the
University System of Georgia was doing
self-paced online courses for academic
credit. Maybe that’s because removing
deadlines has a tendency to set students
up for procrastination, leading Southard
to ask, “how do you overcome this?”
“We set out to make the ideal learning
experience,” she explains. “Since students
naturally do the things that are fun and
interesting first, you make it fun with the
use of technology.”
With that in mind, Southard created high-
ly-visual courses that relied heavily on
animation, stop-motion videos and inter-
active instruction.
“I took every opportunity to make it visu-
al,” she says. “I was going for things that
would be mnemonic, including a digital
professor, a virtual instructor that leads
the students all through the course.”
However, even if an online course is fun,
it’s also important that the students, some
of whom may not be very technological-
ly-oriented, can do the work.
“If you pull the structure out of the course,
the course process must be seamless,”
explains Southard. “It has to be easy to
navigate, it has to be easy to do the work.”
It’s also true that the students weren’t the
only ones having fun.
“It’s fun, it’s been the most fun I’ve ever
had,” says Southard. “In creating the
course, we tried to get a smile on the stu-
dent’s face by transporting them to the
scene, to see what it was like.”
And, according to the students’ feedback,
Southard succeeded in the ultimate goal
of a Clayton State professor, to make a
Clayton State education an empowering
experience and to provide the students
with the support they need to succeed
themselves.
One student in particular captured the sen-
timent of many of those enrolled in the
pilot course, “I thoroughly enjoyed this
class. I am a full-time employee and a
mother of three boys. Going back to
school seemed impossible. This self-
paced course was exactly the type of
course I needed. I was able to complete
my work after the children were in bed or
on the weekend. I hope to have many
more options of self-paced online courses
while attending Clayton State.”
Indeed, every single student who responded
to a course survey said they would enroll in
a self-paced online course in the future.
And that’s as important an “award” as one
from the USDLA or the SoftChalk Lesson
Challenge.
Spring 2014 Honors Convocation
Southard, cont’d., from p. 13