For new SLN faculty the first stage in their development as on-line
instructors is to get on-line and access the SLN Faculty Developer Gateway
(http://SLN.suny.edu/developer). There, they are introduced to the SLN
faculty development and course design processes. They participate in
a facilitated on-line conference to network with our growing community
of on-line instructors and to get the feel for on-line discussion in
the asynchronous Web environment. In stage two, faculty begin to conceptualize
their courses. They complete an on-line orientation to the Web course
environment and they also have the opportunity to observe a variety
of live on-line courses that have been selected as models to help them
get a sense of the possibilities and to get the look and feel of the
on-line classroom. Stage three is the SLN Course Development stage.
They are asked to attend three workshops. At the first workshop, faculty
receive a customized course template created in Lotus Notes, access
to our networked system and on-line resources, and a step-by-step guide
for building the components of their course. They are also assigned
an instructional design partner to work with throughout their first
course-development and delivery cycles and have access to a Help Desk
for technology support. Note that it is not until stage three of our
faculty development process that faculty are introduced to the technology
that they will use to create their course. Our primary focus is on developing
and supporting on-line faculty and effective on-line pedagogy, not on
the technology.
alexandra m. pickett on 22 Apr 08Eric Fredericksen, Alexandra Pickett, Peter Shea State University of New York William Pelz Herkimer County Community College Karen Swan University of Albany Abstract "…100% of faculty reported that they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the SUNY Learning Network." Spring 1999 SLN Faculty Satisfaction Survey The State University of New York (SUNY) Learning Network (SLN) is the on-line instructional program created for the 64 colleges and nearly 400,000 students of SUNY. The foundation of the program is freedom from schedule and location constraints for our faculty and students. The primary goals of the SLN are to bring SUNY's diverse and high-quality instructional programs within the reach of learners everywhere, and to be the best provider of asynchronous instruction for learners in New York State and beyond. We believe that these goals cannot be achieved unless faculty receives appropriate support. This paper will examine factors that have contributed to the high level of faculty satisfaction we have achieved in the SLN. The analysis will be done on several levels. This first section will look at the SLN at a program-wide level and will provide information regarding the systemic implementation of our asynchronous learning environment. The second section examines issues that contribute to on-line teaching satisfaction from a faculty- development and course-design perspective. This section will present the evolution of the four-stage faculty development process and a seven-step course design process that was developed by SLN and comment on lessons learned. The third section presents results from the SLN Faculty Satisfaction Survey conducted in spring 1999. This section examines factors from a quantitative analysis that significantly contributes to faculty satisfaction with on-line teaching and offers recommendations for course and program design based on these factors. The fourth section e
