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.
