Faculty Development and Contributed by Organizations or Campuses

The author has found that her military experience has proven to be good training for teaching ill prepared students.

A checklist of the best strategies for designing and delivering online courses to train online faculty.

"A spirited debate recently arose on the International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS) listserv. A (real world) conference had been announced with the aim of "raising awareness of the benefits of using online technologies in supporting teaching, learning and assessment, with a particular emphasis on the impact of e learning." A university was organizing this conference and aiming it at the university sector. Contributors to the IFETS listserv questioned whether there was still a need for conferences on this topic. In my experience at the University College Dublin (UCD), understanding of the online medium's potential among faculty has always appeared limited. But recent software developments have helped more academics—and their students—at UCD benefit from online learning."

The University of Minnesota has expanded its orientation for new faculty members from several hours to 3 days. The faculty are given information on the library systems and invited to attend faculty development workshops in teaching and learning along with information on other various aspects and programs the university has to offer.

This study describes a set of institutional indicators that suggest minimum standards for the quality
assurance of learning supported by learning management systems in blended contexts. The indicators are evaluated by comparing seven universities that use a common learning management system to support student learning experiences. The responses to a qualitative questionnaire provide evidence of how the participating universities approach leadership, policy making, development, and evaluation as they relate to the quality assurance of learning management systems. A comparison among the universities reveals that they tend to have a better understanding of technical rather than educational issues related to quality assurance. A case is made for the need for universities to address key areas in order to reliably assure the quality of learning supported by learning management systems.

Florida Community College at Jacksonville (FCCJ) was confronted with a growing distance learning enrollment demand and the need for online delivery of high quality, pedagogically rich curriculum. To address this, the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and the Executive Vice President sponsored the On-line Course Development Project.

Many small, undergraduate colleges aspire to similar curricular goals yet lack opportunities to share resources in ways that could help them meet these common goals. These campuses go it alone by choice or for lack of information about others' solutions to their common challenges. Consortia have made progress in sharing administrative services; curricular collaboration is much more difficult in a context where faculty members work independently and are evaluated as individuals. Curricular wheels are reinvented when faculty on neighboring campuses develop similar course materials. Less commonly taught languages remain out of the reach of many small campuses. Students compromise on electives when faculty members take sabbatical leaves. Opportunities to enhance learning are often missed.

On the other hand, technologies that facilitate communication and collaboration, many of which are basic and reliable, allow our faculties to work more closely on curricular projects to the benefit of our students.

Like many institutions, we are challenged with finding effective ways of helping our faculty make effective use of instructional technologies. Moreover, although we are not a laptop campus, we were very interested in getting laptops into the hands of the faculty so that they could use their own machines in classrooms.

Digital multimedia—audio, video, graphics, presentations, and interactive Web sites—has the potential for dramatic new techniques in teaching and learning. At the University of Minnesota, Morris, our faculty members and elementary/secondary education students have been quick to recognize multimedia's potential and are eager to use such tools. From a technical support point of view, however, training an individual to use multimedia applications can be time-consuming and difficult. Intensive, one-on-one help consumes significant staff hours and is often required just to get one enthusiastic professor (with many questions) up and running on the simplest multimedia application.

As with most campus departments in these tight budgetary times, faculty technology centers must strive to achieve goals of enhancing the technology and instructional design skills of their customers while leveraging fewer resources. In the state of Missouri, public institutions of higher education are under continued pressure to further the development of online courses and programs. To accomplish such goals, technology center staff required additional resources and collaborative opportunities.