Purpose of the Distance Education Training Course
This seminar intends to prepare faculty for teaching an asynchronous distance education class. It is a blended course, meaning that some of the interaction is online and some is in person.
To teach distance education (DE) is a natural extension of the skills faculty already possess. At the most fundamental level this means knowing how to imagine a syllabus of research and learning and how to implement it. What differs is the medium for communication, but the message is the same and content will always trump form. Participants will need to prepare a syllabus for the class (nothing new). They will also implement the course as an online offering (something new).
There are differing types of online inter-action. At one extreme is the course that is completely text-based and nothing more than organized emails and attachments. At the other extreme is the approach that includes audio, video and other tools to reduce that distance as much as possible. This is the approach used here. Some of this approach is aided by clever use of technology, some just by good course management practices, and some by the introduction of clever learning ideas.
Classes do still meet. There needs to be a time when readings are done so that discussion has meaning and assignments are due. Otherwise, the course turns into a multitude of independent studies. Faculty and students should get into the habitat of days when class meets and to be prepared, rather than the specific hours for classes that occur face to face settings. There are many times when you can be available though a variety of media. This might include email, communicating through Blackboard, instant messaging, and an old technology for communication -- the telephone.
Several educators talk about the need to modularize DL courses. It is thought that encapsulating learning into discrete information and task chunks is easier to intellectually digest. The modules are often captured in the feel of the classroom. Online, this needs to be much more explicit and defined by outcomes and goals. There will be assignments in the course. These assignments will not be graded nor is it the intention for any sort of systematic comparison. Rather, the assignments intend to produce an online syllabus and a plan of implementation for the summer semester.
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