Distance Education Faculty Training (DEFT) Program

Communication technologies have become such an important part of our world that it's difficult to escape their impact. Elementary school children learn how to design Web pages, high school students develop CD-ROMs, and college students live and die by their e-mail accounts. Learning via technology has been recognized as one of the forces that will affect training and development practices at U.S. corporations, as employees will be required to update skills throughout their careers and will become, in effect, "life-long learners."

With the incorporation of communication technologies, such as compressed video, CD-ROMs, e-mail, and the World Wide Web, distance education is being used by an increasing number of schools, colleges, and universities. A person may be able to use communication technologies, but can that person teach effectively with these technologies?

The sections are divided into modules. You may take as much or as little time as you need to complete each module. The training materials are completely self-paced.

In the Teaching Points sections, you will be able to select the link associated with this symbol   and launch a Real Video clip of an instructor discussing his or her experience with developing, teaching, and managing a distance education course. Most of these videos range from 20 seconds to 2 minutes (as stated next to each link) and require Real Player Basic.

Read more about the experienced Distance Education Faculty you'll be seeing.

You will have opportunities to apply the concepts you're learning to courses that you're developing for distance education delivery. Look for interactive Recipes for Success throughout each module where you'll be able to jot down your ideas.

You can print a .pdf version of the questions that are listed in each section and then write down your answers to the questions on your printed page, OR you may wish to type in your answers to the questions and have the answers submitted to a web database which will allow you to print a report of your ideas.

For web entries, you will be asked to input your email address each time you submit an idea. Then, you can select the "Print Report" link to view a printable page of your course development ideas.

You can print a FULL report of all your submissions to the DEFT program at any time. "Print Report" icons can also be found on the home page and site map.

Comments/Suggestions:

Whether you've gone through some or all of these materials we would appreciate your comments and suggestions for improving this site. (Note: You must have an Internet connection to do this. This link connects to the DEFT website.

Navigational Tips:

At the top of each page will be a navigational bar that tells you what page level you are in within the site. Here is an example from the top of this page:

Home > Using this Site > Using These Training Materials

This "hierarchy" of pages indicate that you are on a page linked from the "Using This Site" page, which in turn is linked to the home page. This should help in navigating the site.

Getting Started wih this Training Program:

We would like you to go through all of the materials in this training program, so we suggest starting with the Introduction. However, this is a self-paced training program, so you may choose to start wherever your interests or needs lead you.

Now you'll need to select the module where you would like to start. We suggest starting with the Introduction but you're welcome to start wherever you like.