All course lectures should be recorded. This could be a zoom or classroom recording. The quality must be met.
MEST Long Course Roles & Expectations
This document summarizes the roles and responsibilities of MEST Team members and the MEST instructor for courses longer than 4 weeks. Its purpose is to align expectations and ensure a positive experience for the learners.
MEST Team
To ensure a quality experience for learners while reducing barriers for instructors, the MEST Team can offer the following support to MEST instructors:
- Provide a list of learners’ names and emails to the instructor 5 days before course start date.
- Provide a syllabus checklist and/or assistance with the syllabus creation upon request.
- Share the results of a pre-course questionnaire 5 days before course start date.
- Upload video, text, and other content to nanoHUB within 7 days of receiving the content.
- Assist instructors in creating and delivering learning assessments, if requested.
- Deliver mid, immediate-post, and one-month post course, and three-month post course evaluations, and share the results within 5 business days of evaluation close.
- Order materials needed for practical /lab portions of the course and provide them to learners.
- Make recordings of course virtual sessions available 3 days after course session is completed.
MEST Instructor
To ensure a quality experience for learners, the MEST Team requests the following from instructors:
- Promote the course via their social networks (LinkedIn, etc.) prior to registration.
- Provide a course syllabus 2 weeks before the course start date that incorporates the components indicated in the syllabus guidance checklist (see included list below).
- Provide course content (videos, unencrypted slides in PowerPoint or PDF format, and other items) 1 week before the relevant course session.
- Request consultation regarding learning assessment, if desired, 2 weeks before the course start date. Learning assessments can include, but are not limited to, quizzes, assignments, and projects.
- Allocate 10 minutes of class time for learners to complete the mid-course and immediate-course evaluations during a live course session.
- Respond to student questions and provide feedback on projects or assignments in a timely manner
- Provide the MEST Team with feedback regarding their experience as an instructor.
- Determine whether asynchronous access to course materials will be open to everyone or restricted.
- Determine whether access to the course asynchronously is limited to the students enrolled in the live course.
- Coordinate with the MEST team to send one month and three month course impact surveys on your behalf to students. Emails coming on behalf of faculty are expected to increase participant response rates. Better response rates provide more robust feedback to inform future MEST offerings.
Long-Course Syllabus Checklist
The following checklist is created to ensure that each course meets student expectations and provides for consistency across the different courses.
- Do you list the course name, faculty contact information, and correct dates?
- Do you list 2-5 course objectives?
- Do you list textbooks and refer to any supplemental readings/course materials indicating what is required and what is optional?
- Do you indicate if any software will be needed for the course?
- Do you mark the value of each assignment/component in terms of points, not percentage?
- Do you have clear deadlines stated and a policy for late submissions?
- Are your videos a maximum of 15-18 minutes long for any asynchronous components?
- Do you indicate the expectations/grading criteria for each assignment?
- Are assignments linked to readings/videos?
- Do you specify parameters for assignments: length, spacing, font size?
- Do you have a range of assessment criteria to ensure a significant individual component, to ensure no one component is more than 40% of the overall grade, so that the assessments can be used to indicate proficiency in the subject matter and thus, appropriate towards issuing a certification of proficiency.
Please let the Program Manager know about any planned changes to the syllabus after the beginning of the course. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact the MEST Coordinator at mest@eng.ufl.edu.