Course
Selection
For many years, the "build it and they
will come" mindset of the movie A Field of Dreams was the
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences' distance education development
plan: develop courses and then they will attract students. Many courses
early on had few students. However, the demand for some courses just wasn't
there.
Now after several years of distance education course development behind it, CALS has gone to a demand-driven strategy: identify specific courses with high demand to support CALS initiatives (for example, Research and Education Center degree programs and the Master's of Agriculture distance education degrees) and support these courses. You may be approached to develop a high-demand course to address a specific need.
Before you begin the development of a course, you should consult with the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences' Associate Dean to identify the demand for your proposed course. A form helping you identify a course's projected demand, costs, and resource needs is on the IFAS/CALS Distance Education Web site (http://disted.ifas.ufl.edu) and must be completed prior to a course's development. The specific page for the form is http://disted.ifas.ufl.edu/faculty/proposal.htm. In order to estimate a course's cost, you should contact an IFAS Communication Services instructional designer.
The college provides limited financial support for distance education course development and implementation. Courses identified by the college, departments, and Research and Education Centers as having the highest demand will receive support priority.
Thinking
Like Students
As you develop your distance education
course, you may wish to start thinking like a student. As has been noted
in other sections, keeping your audience/learners in mind is extremely
important in the instructional development of any course. In distance education,
this concept is especially important. Distance education students have
special requirements. Following are some of these differences and special
requirements for distance education students.
Enrollment and Registration
The information below can be found in
the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences' Distance Education Course
Catalog. A checklist of what a student should do is provided in the
catalog. Students also should check the ICS Web site at http://disted.ifas.ufl.edu/register/reginfo.html
for current registration information. "General" student information, regarding
distance education, is available at http://disted.ifas.ufl.edu/student/student.htm.
For more information about registration and course selection, please check
the section "Distance Education Registration
and Course Information."
Following is some student-specific information that you, as a faculty member, should be aware of in your distance education course: