COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES ITC

Technology-enhancement adds new elements to instructional planning; Instructional Technology Consultants can help you anticipate and incorporate these elements effectively.

Project Definition
What are you hoping to gain from using technology? Is it your goal to establish a basic "web presence" for a course, or is it your goal to develop a course that could be taught fully online? What qualifies as a "fully online" course anyway? Have you planned the structure of the course? These are among the questions ITCs can help you answer.

Technical Learning
How will you account for the training time needed for students, and yourself, to learn the technical skills needed to complete coursework online? Will you allow classtime to learn technical skills (in which case you may want to reserve a campus computer lab)? Will you give assignments and/or have students work in pairs in order to make sure they have the skills they need? Will you assess your students' skill levels prior to class or during the first week of class? How will you resolve student problems with technology? ITCs can help you plan to address these sorts of questions proactively.

Teamwork
What technical support and production services are available to you? Who do you contact about these services? Although UNCG is committed to faculty self-sufficiency in the use of the online environment and its associated tools, there are nonetheless a range of technical support and production services that are available to you. ITCs can help you locate and evaluate these services.

Student Services
What technical support services are available to your students? If you have students who are not on campus, how will they get registered? How will they receive their course materials? What technical skills does the University expect students to have, and how does the University assist students in acquiring these skills if they do not already have them? What degree of access to technology does the University provide for students who may not have computers of their own? What services does the University provide for students with disabilities? ITCs can help you gather this information and make workable decisions.

Role Re-Definitions
What are the likely adjustments you will need to make in order to feel comfortable teaching online? What are some problems or issues that are likely to arise? What is the ideal profile of an online instructor? What is the ideal profile of an online student? How are these profiles different from face-to-face profiles? What opportunities and challenges does teaching and learning online provide? ITCs can help you anticipate and adjust to the online environment.

Realistic Timelines
How can you make reasonable estimates of the amount of time that teaching online may require? ITCs can help you assess your project(s), and make reasonable timelines for accomplishing what you set out to do.

Multi-Modal Strategies
How will you create multi-modal strategies online (i.e., the equivalent of talking and writing that often occurs in face-to-face instruction)? Have you accounted for your own learning preferences in designing instruction? ITCs can help you make informed, workable choices among multi-modal options that are currently available for online instruction.