Online Teaching Award

Excellence in Online Teaching Award

This award honors one faculty member per year who shows evidence of outstanding online teaching for a fully online or hybrid/blended course. Awardees will receive a one-time stipend of $1,000 and a Certificate of Recognition, and will be featured in the Excellence in Online Teaching Award webpage. Individuals who have received the Excellence in Online Teaching Award in previous years are not eligible to reapply.

IU South Bend is committed to offer quality online education, just as we do on our physical campus. There are different ways to demonstrate outstanding in online teaching, one of which is to apply Quality Matters (QM) principles in course design. To learn more about QM, visit https://academics.iusb.edu/online-education/faculty-resources.html.

For this award, a fully online course is defined as a course taught 100% online. This includes courses that are taught as part of the IU Online Class Connect (IUOCC) and/or joint degree programs, or as a fully online course for IU South Bend students. A hybrid/blended course has 26% to 99% of the course taught online.

All tenured and tenure-track faculty, full-time lecturers, clinical faculty (whose primary duty is teaching), and associate faculty who:

  • Have taught at IU South Bend for a minimum of three years (six semesters for associate faculty)
  • Have taught at least four sections (fully online or hybrid/blended) before the fall semester of the call for applications and for the last three years (not necessarily academic years)
  • Have not previously received this award

Candidates do not need to be nominated for this award; self-nominations are acceptable. It is the candidate's responsibility to compile the completed application and email it as a single PDF file to the Director of Online Education at (onlinesb@iusb.edu) by 11:59 p.m. on February 1. Please use subject Excellence in Online Teaching Award.

Late submissions will not be accepted.

Please note, this is the same deadline as the Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award. Applicants may apply for either or both awards.

To present a case of excellent in online teaching, the applicant is required to submit evidence from each area described below. The combined total from areas 2 to 5 must not exceed 10 pages. The cover sheet and Appendix do not count as part of the 10-page limit (see below).

Please use 12-point easy-to-read font, one-inch margins, and page numbers. Content of the application should be included in a single PDF file in the order stated below.

  1. Cover sheet: A cover sheet that includes the following information: Name, title, rank, department/school/college, email, years of teaching at IU South Bend.
  2. Teaching Statement: A descriptive and reflective statement about the applicant’s approach to teaching online, and highlighting particular strengths. The applicant should use this statement to make the case for sustained and consistent excellence in online teaching. This statement is limited to 3 pages.
  3. Summary of online teaching accomplishments:
  • Table of online courses taught at IU South Bend by semester, tagged as fully online or hybrid, and course enrollment
  • Evidence of online teaching’s impact on student learning and engagement
  • Demonstrations of engagement activities in teaching, such as:
  • Online course development
  • Online teaching innovations/curriculum design
  • Online teaching related publications and/or presentations
  • Online teaching grants (briefly describe purpose of grant)
  • Engagement in activities for faculty development in online teaching (e.g., completion of online course development seminar, Quality Matters training, mentoring colleagues in online teaching, etc.)
  • Online teaching related service/Leadership in online education (briefly describe role)
  1. Course access: Provide temporary access to a course or course shell for review by committee members. State the course name, course number and URL to the course homepage.
  2. Peer review: One peer review of online teaching, focusing on quality of online teaching, by a full-time faculty member (whether the reviewer taught online, hybrid or face-to-face courses) is required. The peer reviewer must explicitly state the date the candidate’s teaching was observed, and should not have supervisory relationship with the candidate or be faculty co-teaching a course or was co-teaching a course at the time of the peer review. The peer review must be conducted within the past two years, and the letter is limited to two pages.
  3. Appendix:
    • Mini-course portfolio from a recent fully online or hybrid course:
      • Syllabus
      • One lesson or module and its assessment (exam items or assignment) as screenshots
    • Course evaluations or other student feedback for fully-online or hybrid courses/sections taught, preferably in the last three years. Please include response rate and brief commentary on trends that you see as important in your evaluations and how student feedback has informed your online teaching. This summary is limited to two pages.

The selection committee will be composed of three faculty members who have experience in online (hybrid or fully online) teaching, the Online Education and Technology Specialist, and the Director of Online Education.

Below is a list of criteria with recommended evidence to support each criteria, applicants do NOT need to provide all evidence in order to apply for the award.

  • Quality of Online Course Design
    • ___ Evidence of effort to ensure quality of course design.
    • ___ Evidence that approaches to course design and delivery are effective and reflecting best practices.
    • ___ Quality Matters (QM) or other course design training/certification
  • Effective Online Learning Environment
    • ___ Evidence of online teaching that enhance effectiveness of online learning environment.
  • Interaction with Online Students
    • ___ Evidence of interaction with online students.
  • Engagement in Online Teaching
    • ___ Evidence of course development, teaching innovations and/or curriculum design.
    • ___ Evidence of publications and/or presentations related to online education.
    • ___ Evidence of award(s) of online teaching grants.
    • ___ Evidence of active and on-going efforts to improve online teaching.
    • ___ Service/leadership related to online education.
  • Peer Review
    • ___ Evidence of quality online teaching.

Award Winners

Jenny Deranek
2022 Award Winner

Jenny Deranek, Assistant Dean, School of Applied Health Sciences; and Clinical Assistant Professor of Health Sciences, Vera Z. Dwyer College of Health Sciences

Mohammad Merhi
2020 Award Winner

Mohammad Merhi, Chair and Associate Professor of Decision Sciences, Judd Leighton School of Business and Economics

Jay VanderVeen
2017 Award Winner

Jay VanderVeenChair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology; and Associate Professor of Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences