Faculty and online learning 

The Schreyer Institute is dealing with a higher volume of requests over the last 8 months or so around online learning. They typically come in two forms:
1. “I want to develop an online course, and I have approval from my department head, but World Campus can’t fit us in their pipeline and/or my college’s elearning group can’t fit us into their pipeline. How can I proceed?”

We are currently working with a department in this position, and several other departments have approached us that are coming from this same perspective. I believe some of the core council letters are fueling the increase in this type of request.

2. “I’m having problems with X in my online class, can you help?”

In this case, “X” ranges from working with online teams, integrating new technologies, comparing SRTEs from online to face-to-face, best way to implement discussion forums…you name it, we’ve probably interacted with a faculty member about it. The Institute is working with Larry Ragan at world campus on faculty development efforts focused on online instructors. Larry’s primary audience is world campus instructors. That still leaves a large number of faculty that teach online through different delivery units that could use faculty development programs. We’re not sure exactly who is working in this space, and what we can do at the Institute that would be the biggest help to everyone.