Training Requirements for New Online Instructors

Beginning with the Fall 2008 semester, faculty teaching online courses at TCC must have had prior experience teaching online courses at TCC or must have completed an approved training program that includes basic preparation in the andragogy (the educational principles and methodologies of adult learning) and design of online instruction. At present, all faculty who have successfully taught online courses at TCC prior to the Fall 2008 term are provisionally approved to continue teaching online. Any other faculty wishing to teach online can obtain approval by completing at least two of the available Blackboard training seminars and one of these comprehensive faculty development programs:

• TCC’s Online Academy, as offered since the Fall 2007 semester;
• the VCCS TOP (Teaching Online Program), currently being piloted throughout the VCCS; or
• the Spring 2008 Distance Learning Boot Camp pilot (developed and delivered through an ITTL grant).

Any full- or part-time faculty member planning to teach online for the first time in the Fall 2008 semester who has not already completed – or is in the process of completing – one of these programs MUST complete the next six-week TOP session, which begins on July 1, 2008.  Contact Mike Williams at 822-1913 or cmwilliams@tcc.edu to enroll.

Certificates of completion must be on file with TCC’s credentialing specialist prior to a faculty member’s assignment to an online class.

Both the Online Academy and the TOP pilot are presently in session and are scheduled to conclude on August 7, 2008, and June 30, 2008, respectively.  A new six-week TOP session will be offered beginning July 1, 2008; a new eight-week Online Academy will begin on August 21, 2008.