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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. 

However, few would deny that there is a strong probability that the distancing effect of computer-mediated asynchronous learning will cause many instructors and students to view one another more like extensions of the machines through which they are communicating than as real persons with emotions, aspirations, problems, time constraints and (in the case of most faculty) the very real need for sleep. As overworked online instructors turn to labor-saving shortcuts, such as computer software that can actually grade papers, and are compelled by the financial exigencies of higher education to increase their class sizes to unmanageable proportions, the problem of distancing is becoming increasingly serious [1].