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FMD was hired the year after my arrival. She was a retired school administrator with prior higher education experience. Like FMC2, her duties were split between the MSA and C&I. FMD was involved in the redesign but left the university mid-year, before full implementation of the new program.

FME was hired mid-year to replace FMD. This was FME’s first higher education appointment, though she had facilitated online school administration courses as a doctoral candidate. Like me, FME was a mid-career changer from K-12. FME was idealistic and a ready collaborator, open to new ideas.

Camelot

The rise (2007-2008)

This section describes the redesign process. After a discussion of the multiple catalysts for the redesign, I provide a glimpse into the idealistic beginnings of the redesign efforts. I will elaborate on how online faculty members developed a strong professional learning community (PLC) and share the process of the redesign.

Catalysts. In the spring of 2005, our program had moved online at the request of several regional superintendents. We became the state’s only online principal licensure program in order to serve the large mountainous rural region of western North Carolina; however, we quickly began to receive students from all over the state. Enrollments expanded from 40 in the fall of 2006 to 160 by fall, 2009. As we prepared for the 2007-08 academic year, we faced a number of challenges. Foremost among them was a curriculum that was compartmentalized and not designed for online delivery. The new faculty members had no investment in the old design and our mutual desires to develop principals as strong change agents made it easy to consider a redesign. The explosion in enrollments taxed our admissions and advising systems, as well as our ability to deliver all of the courses needed. Finally in 2007, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill mandating the redesign of all MSA programs. DPI was charged with overseeing the redesign process. The MSA faculty had already decided to redesign the program prior to the state mandate. This helped us view the state mandate as a lever instead of a club.

Idealistic beginnings. Seven different faculty members were involved in the early design phase during the 2007-08 academic year. The group consisted of DH1, FMA, FBB, FMC1-3, and FMD. At our first redesign meeting in October, we unanimously decided to design a program from scratch that was fully aligned with our beliefs about leadership, especially the commitment to being ethically and artistically driven and courageous in one’s actions. We also wanted the program to take advantage of and compensate for weaknesses inherent in online programs. We saw opportunities to democratize the educational practice by promoting student voice and by using our courses as places to gain, exchange, and process information, while using participants’ actual work sites as their MSA classrooms by driving many assignments into their “real world.” We also focused intently on creating elements that would facilitate the development of intimate learning communities that would fill the void of the lack of physical presence in online programs. We developed a mantra to capture and guide the spirit of the new program: live your leadership journey courageously © (Jacobs, Buskey, Topolka-Jorissen, Szlizewski,&Allen, 2010). The team also decided to use their own research expertise, experiences, and values to be the primary drivers of the redesign and to backwards map DPI requirements.

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Source:  OpenStax, Ncpea handbook of online instruction and programs in education leadership. OpenStax CNX. Mar 06, 2012 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11375/1.24
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