"I have enjoyed being able to work at my own time and not have to commute to class. Also, having all the courses I need available online makes my education easier to get."

-Deborah Baker-Davila, Salt Lake City, UT

Please note that the Online Instructor Development Training Program described below is currently unavailable. When it becomes available again, we will update this page with new training schedule dates and information.

OnlineLearning.net (OLn) works in conjunction with its education providers to offer and teach a six-week Instructor Development Training Program. The training program is conducted entirely online and successful completion is mandatory for all instructors who intend to teach online for our education providers. It is a comprehensive program that combines software training along with lessons in the methods, approaches, and practical techniques for teaching online, taught by experts in online education from the Instructor Development Team (IDT). The IDT staff has many years of experience in curriculum development and teaching at the college level and a firm grounding in adult education and distance learning. OLn gives progress reports to the education providers on the status of instructors going through training and certifies their successful completion. Customized programs are also available to non-providers who would like to train their instructors to teach online.

Our goal is to give instructors the opportunity to experience a model of online teaching and learning as well as allow them time to get comfortable in this new environment. Therefore we attempt to simulate the online learning experience as closely as possible. New instructors participate in an online classroom with their peers and the training instructor will respond to questions and give feedback as they build their own practice shells through completion of the exercises. The training course instructor will model the strategies that new instructors may eventually use in their own online courses.

This training has been designed with the practical needs of online instructors in mind. Not only will participants learn the skills and strategies necessary for effective online teaching, they will also get first-hand experience communicating within the actual software environment they will be using to teach their own online courses. The instructor development training program covers software basics and includes topics such as methods and approaches, online course management techniques, course conversion, creating an online syllabus and other issues that are crucial for effective online teaching. In addition to participating in the online instructor-training classroom, participants will audit one or more online courses to experience a range of effective teaching models.

The training is designed to be completed within six weeks. Since all participation is asynchronous, not in real time, instructors may log in at any time during the week and can also return back to previous weeks' discussion threads to restart discussions. However, they are expected to participate on a weekly basis throughout the six weeks, completing all the lessons and exercises and reading all topics posted by the instructor leading the sessions as well as posting a reply or question to at least one topic in each week's discussion area. Consistent and frequent participation is the key to successfully absorbing and integrating the training lessons, exercises, topics and discussions. The training is conducted on a pass/no pass basis, and participants should obtain 80% of possible points derived from completion of weekly exercises and discussion as well as self-assessment review quizzes.

Additional individual consultation about adapting courses to the online environment is also available during and after the development training. Such consultation may include feedback on online syllabus creation, course conversion, course design, use of web resources, multimedia, or classroom management problems.

Once they have received an online teaching assignment, instructors are automatically invited via email from OLn to enroll in the training session closest to the beginning of their first teaching quarter. If they wish to enroll in an earlier session, leaving a more ample window of time for course planning, they may do so with the agreement of their institution, association or publisher and OLn.

Sessions are scheduled for every term and are generally limited to 25 participants.