Extended Education & Outreach
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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Lincoln, Neb., November 11, 2004 -- The Summer Institute for Online Teaching (SIOT) has received the 2004 Excellence in Faculty Development for Online Teaching award from the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C), a group of more than 450 institutions and organizations committed to quality online education.

This Sloan-C award recognizes an institution that has developed and delivered an outstanding program for faculty professional development in online teaching. According to the Sloan-C web site, they look for an institution-wide program that has had a positive impact on a significant number of faculty, leading to these faculty teaching large numbers of high-quality online courses, while maintaining a high degree of faculty satisfaction.

"We knew that the Summer Institute has had a positive impact on faculty, but winning this award solidifies that fact," said Marie Barber, director of Instructional Design & Development at Extended Education & Outreach (EE&O). "I'm very excited that the team received this recognition for their efforts in producing a quality program."

The SIOT Coordination Team recognized with the award includes Beverly Russell of EE&O, Wade Weichel of Information Services, Charles Ansorge of Educational Psychology, Laurie Bellows of Graduate Studies and Norma Patterson, formerly of EE&O who is now the head of distance learning at Grand Canyon University in Arizona. The award will be formally presented on Nov. 12 at the 10 th Sloan-C International Conference on Asynchronous Learning Networks in Orlando , Fl.

Since it began in 2002, the Summer Institute for Online Teaching (SIOT) has helped instructors from every college at UNL enhance their online teaching skills. This summer the Institute was also offered to faculty at the University of Nebraska at Kearney for the first time. Between the two campuses, more than 40 faculty members completed the five-week online program guiding them through the steps of course development, Web-based interaction, course management and online assessment. UNL participants also received a faculty development credit and will receive mentoring support during the 2004-05 academic year through their academic colleges, Instructional Technology Group and EE&O.

"Collaborating with UNK gave us the opportunity to share resources and allowed both campuses to extend their distance educator community beyond institutional borders," said Beverly Russell, of Instructional Design & Development at EE&O. "I think winning this award will help us continue to attract top faculty to participate in the program and get involved in distance learning."

Serving as one of the program's facilitators, she saw that participants had in fact benefited from the experience. "It was clear by the final face-to-face session (via Polycom with UNK) that everyone had experienced and reflected upon both the craft and art of teaching online."

" I've taught online courses using Blackboard for several years, but I know I have utilized only a small fraction of the available Blackboard resources," said J. David Aiken, professor and water and agricultural law specialist in UNL's Department of Agricultural Economics. "The Institute was the first faculty workshop to demonstrate all of the distance learning opportunities it offers. It was also valuable to look at online courses taught by experienced, successful online instructors."

The Summer 2004 Institute for Online Teaching was sponsored by UNL's Office of Extended Education & Outreach, Instructional Technology Group and the New Media Center and UNK's Division of Continuing Education.

UNL faculty interested in participating in the next year's Summer Institute for Online Teaching or learning may contact Greta Glenn, Distance Education Services, at 472-4346 or gglenn2@unl.edu .