Non Technical Summary
This project will develop twonew online courses in wildlife management. Currently, students graduating with natural science degrees from UOG are not U.S. Office of Personnel (OPM)-qualified to apply for jobs as wildlife biologists through federal agencies. This means that agencies largely have to hire off-island biologists who are not familiar with the local ecology. By adding these two critical courses, students will have the opportunity to take all the necessary courses to be OPM-qualified wildlife biologists upon graduation. This will provide students with more employment opportunities on Guam, reduce the problem of brain drain by biological professionals, provide federal agencies with locally-trained wildlife biologists, and give students across several disciplines a better understanding of how to control and mitigate invasive species damage in agriculture and food production operations.Developing on-line courses allows these courses to be shared with other insular institutions and reduces the number of full-time faculty needed for Agriculture and Biology Programs. Courses will be fully developed so that other institutions can simply "plug and play".

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
123	0850	1070	80%
136	0640	1070	20%

Knowledge Area
136 - Conservation of Biological Diversity; 123 - Management and Sustainability of Forest Resources;

Subject Of Investigation
0850 - Wildlife habitats; 0640 - Tropical forests;

Field Of Science
1070 - Ecology;

Goals / Objectives
Major Goals:The project's target objective is to create at least two core wildlife classes necessary to meet the certification guidelines in Wildlife Biology (as outlined by U.S Office of Personnel Management (OPM) https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/0400/wildlife-biology-series-0486/). These additional courses, when combined with required courses already offered as part of UOG's natural resource programs, will qualify graduating students as wildlife biologists. These courses will give students the knowledge and skills to help control the spread of invasive species in the Pacific Islands.Objective 1: Create a course in Tropical Wildlife Management, which includes a lab component to reinforce topics covered in the course.Objective 2: Create a course in Tropical Herpetology, which includes a lab component to reinforce topics covered in the course.Objective 3: Create fully developed courses that can be taught at multiple insular institutions with minimal faculty development.Objective 4: Create courses that meet the Quality Matters guidelines.

Project Methods
Methods:Step1: Course planningThe first step of the course design will be defining the course focus, objectives and goals for each course (Wildlife Management and Herpetology). The instructional designer (ID) will collaborate with the subject matter expert(s) (SMEs) and college academic chair(s) to discuss course objectives and goals, as well as how to engage students to get the most out of each course. Along with course goals, specific learning objectives will outline what the students should know, understand, and be able to do once they complete each course. The objectives of each course will emphasize issues pertinent to island ecosystems in the Western Pacific. Both the ID and SME will take a webinar in course development, as offered by Quality MattersTM, or other similar organization.Step 2:Development details & timelineOnce the course objectives are outlined, the SME(s) and instructional designer will develop a timeline, deliverables, roles and technology requirements. The development timeline will include completion dates for major and minor stages of development. For example, the timeline will outline completion dates for the development of instructional activities for each unit. The ID and SME will also determine the best software to use to develop the course (SoftChalk, Genie, Grasp, etc.).Step 3: Course Design &DevelopmentOnce planning is complete, the SME will create weekly outlines for the course including topics, learning objectives for the week, lectures, readings, other media and multimedia needs, as well as assignment concepts.Instructional SupportReview and refinement of learning activity/assessment alignment with learning objectivesRubric developmentRefine learning activities/assessments for online studentsInstructor presence strategiesLecture DevelopmentSlide designScript editingLicensed imagesEdited charts and graphsEdited audioFully produced multimedia lecturePDFs of slides with transcriptsOnline lab simulationsMoodle Course Site DevelopmentExternally-produced resources (PDFs, multimedia, lectures, documents) loaded into course siteSet up course quizzesSet up course assignmentsSet up discussionsSet up gradebookReadings list provided to Libraries and added to course siteStep 4: Course Review and TestingOnce the course has been developed and produced in the on-line shell (Moodle), review and testing will begin. Initially, the course will be reviewed by the ID and SME to find any errors, broken links, missing assignments, etc. Following their review, the course will be sent to an independent reviewer, such as Quality MattersTM, or a similar organization.Proofread textClarification of instructions on siteDue date reviewsGradebook checkMultimedia checkDigital Course Pack checkOnce the material has been reviewed, tested, and approved, the courses will be offered as '394' courses. This allows the courses to be offered to students on a preliminary basis, prior to becoming a permanent course in the academic course listings. Following a successful first semester, the courses will be added to UOG's course listings. The course package will also be available to other institutions in the Western Pacific islands.Evaluation: The main purpose of the evaluation is to assess the quality of the developed courses through the eyes of the learner. There will be four methods of evaluation. The most intensive evaluation will be a course review conducted by independent evaluators through a company such as Quality MattersTM, or similar organization. This is a trained group of online instructors who review the entire course based on a rubric of standards. This evaluation will be completed prior to course launch and will likely take several months to complete. Once the course is launched, students will start the semester by participating in a pre-course survey, such as Student Assessment of their Learning Gains (SALG), in which students give input as to what they hope to gain from the course. The students will also start the semester with a pre-test of the basic course objectives. At the end of the course, students will once again participate in the SALG survey and take a post-test to determine if course objectives were met. Students will also have the opportunity to fill out course evaluations.