When colleges and universities are scrambling to shift to online learning during the worst pandemic in 100 years, three University of St. Thomas authors published a new book offering a much needed interactive roadmap for creating effective and engaging online courses.

A New Roadmap

The book, written for higher education faculty and others creating online courses for adult learners, is titled, The New Roadmap for Creating Online Courses: An Interactive Workbook (2020) and published by Cambridge University Press.

The authors are Associate Professor in the School of Education and Human Services, Dr. Catherine R. Barber, Director of QEP and Core Assessment Dr. Janet K. McCollum and Sr. Instructional Designer Dr. Wendy L. Maboudian.

Award-Winning Authors

Over recent years, both Barber and McCollum have garnered numerous awards by Blackboard Inc. for developing engaging and innovative courses that represent the very best in technology and learning.

In 2019, Barber and McCollum were awarded the 2019 Blackboard Catalyst Award for Teaching and Learning at the BbWorld annual user conference. Barber has two award-winning courses. In 2020, Barber won a Blackboard award for her Human Growth and Development course, and in 2017, she won for her course Educational Research and Scholarly Writing. In 2018, McCollum won for her course Educational Research Design and Data Analysis.

How to Create Effective Online Courses

The book, is a long-time dream of the authors’ desire to guide others through the journey to create effective online courses. Their collaborative approach to writing brought together each author’s unique skills, ideas, interests, and experiences. The content and structure of the book  mirrors in paper/digital form the process of creating an online course.

Barber describes the New Roadmap as “deeply influenced by a synthesis of learning theory, research, and experience in developing and facilitating online courses. At the same time, the book is an interactive workbook that guides readers through the Change-adept Course Creation Process as they prepare, create and revise their own online course.”

Sharing the Book's Concepts and Processes

Throughout the spring and summer, the authors have shared the book’s concepts and process for creating online courses at various virtual conference presentations and webinars.

“We have been very gratified by the interest people across the United States and in other countries have expressed in applying our ideas as they create their own online courses,” Maboudian said.

This summer, the book was used at UST as part of the training for the Online Faculty Collaborative Coaches and also for the Freshman Symposium mentors.

 “We’re excited by our colleagues’ willingness to share their wealth of experience, much of which informed or confirmed the ideas in this workbook,” McCollum said. “We look forward to further discussions and collaboration with faculty who are applying the book’s concepts and process.”