Page 28 - Laker Connection Fall 2015

Faculty Profile
“iamnoT afraid To Try new
approaches aslongasi believe They can help sTudenTs masTer The conTenT.
dr. sheryne souThard
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Associate Professor of Legal Studies
Associate Professor of Legal Studies Sheryne Southard creates an award-winning innovative on- line approach to learning through Clayton State’s first Self-Paced Online Course (SPOC).
Southard has taught at Clayton State for 12 years and has been recognized for her hybrid and pure online courses in many institutions, including the Grand Award Winner of the AAFPE Pearson-Pren- tice Hall Online Teaching Competition in 2009, the University System of Georgia (USG) Board of Regents’ Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award in 2010, an honorable mention award for the National SoftChalk Lesson Competition in 2014, and the USG Board of Regents’ Teaching Excellence Award in 2015.
The SPOC pilot project began in spring 2014 with an American government course, and included all of the Clayton State political science faculty con- tributing content in constructing the course. After only two months the SPOC was submitted to the 2014 An- nual SoftChalk Lesson Challenge and was awarded fourth place out of 117 entrants including educators from K-12, colleges, universities, and medical pro- grams across the nation.
What made Southard’s course so unique was its catering to self-paced learning; the course’s only deadline is the end of the semester.
Elaborating that her courses are in continuous progress to adapt to students’ expressed needs, she says, “Distance education is a dynamic and chang- ing learning environment where I am constantly learning and discovering new ways to improve.”
Southard’s collaboration with her colleagues aided to the success of the ever-evolving product, partic- ularly with Dr. Rafik Mohamed, then-chair of the Social Sciences Department, who helped develop the vision of an online educational course that could be as academically rigorous as a traditional course, while self-paced. The main concept to con- quer was a student’s tendency to procrastinate
after the removal of deadlines. Southard decided to combat this with interesting interactive learning.
Not only were the students more engaged with this, as proven by her all-inclusive census that in- dicated that each student that enrolled in her SPOC course would enroll in another SPOC course in the fu- ture, but interactive learning also tends to result in bet- ter comprehension. Southard quotes Benjamin Franklin to capture the essence of her interactive ap- proach to SPOC: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
She worked with Christopher White, former Clayton State multimedia designer, to create the course as highly-visual and interactive course complete with an- imation and stop-motion video and role play simula- tions.
“I was going for things that would be mnemonic, including a virtual instructor that leads the stu- dents all through the course.” She noted the impor- tance of being able to navigate these online avenues with ease, particularly for students who may not be internet savvy.
One such student who evaluated the course wrote, “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.”
“I rely upon student feedback to guide me as to whether my approaches are successful or not, and make adjustments whenever needed to benefit the stu- dents,” Southard says. “As the students are learning the content, I am learning how to best instruct them. John Cotton Dana captured my sentiments on this topic precisely, `who dares to teach must never cease to learn.’”
BY SIERA BLASCO
THE LAKER CONNECTION
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