The World Campus, Penn State's virtual university offers top-quality signature academic programs to distance education students anytime, anywhere. Through a new World Campus program, faculty at higher education institutions worldwide have access to a new tool for expanding their ability to integrate technology into their instruction. The course has been available to Penn State faculty registered to teach in the World Campus since last year. The public version of the site provides access to the same teaching resources contained in the instructor-led Penn State course. The course is divided into two modules, one for authoring an on-line course and one for instructing it.
Users work through the course at their own pace.
World Campus faculty engaged in discussions finish in about seven on-line hours per module. Those taking Faculty Development 101 for informational purposes only can finish both in an afternoon and gain a source of useful references, resources and templates to continue more specific course planning work. Course participants who are not registered faculty have access to activities that do not require interaction with other students. Some introductory elements of the course are tailored to World Campus faculty, but most lessons are constructed around skills and issues important for all distance educators and applicable to resident instructors who employ information technologies as well. An important course session offers research on the characteristics of distance education students and ways to tailor course content to meet their goals and needs.