Greetings from CAT! I’m Karen Nichols, the new Distance Education Coordinator and I’m so excited to be a part of such a great team and university. Xavier’s online initiatives these past two summers have been quite successful and I’ve been tasked to assist in making Xavier Online bigger and better. Fortunately, Xavier has wonderful, creative faculty members who bring a great deal of expertise to the distance education arena.
In addition to the faculty who have already developed and taught online courses, several others have expressed an interest in learning more about hybrid or fully online courses. So, as my bi-weekly contribution to CAT Food, I’d like to feature an article, video or some bit of news on distance education which I hope will be useful and informative.
For my first entry I recommend a short video about Coursera, Stanford’s MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) project which I find so inspiring. The sentiments echo my own after being a part of distance education for 22+ years:
Did you watch the video just now? It always makes me a little misty-eyed. If you're thinking about teaching online this article from Faculty Focus offers several points to consider. And even if you're not ready for online teaching, I hope you'll find the "Eight Roles of an Effective Online Teacher" useful in a face to face class as well.
I look forward to meeting and working with more of the faculty here at Xavier so please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll be happy to get together with you to discuss any projects or ideas you may have. Wishing you a great week!