Once you’ve decided to take your course online, you will want to become more knowledgeable about distance teaching tools, strategies and theories. To help in this, the Office of Online & Distance Education provides a number of development opportunities designed to assist you in becoming more comfortable teaching in the distance environment.
The Instructional Design Technology Specialists provide one of the most important support systems for faculty who are teaching at a distance. To find the instructional designer assigned to your college or department visit our Contact Us page. The instructional designers provide individual consulting and assistance for distance education faculty. They can help you meet many of the following challenges that you face developing and teaching distance education courses:
- Developing appropriate and manageable distance delivered assessments that maintain the open-ended nature of learning while also building more definitive knowledge and skills.
- Identifying techniques for ensuring instructor presence and a sense of community and engagement within distance programs that include students located around the world.
- Finding methods for ensuring access to course content and activities dependent on a range of connectivity.
- Strategies for ensuring cross-group projects and presentations and inclusion of current relevant information within a manageable student and instructor distance environment.
- Coordination with other campus units, such as the New Media Center or DEAL Lab, to provide needed additional technical or infrastructure support.
