TNU and NBC Online Education Programs Highlighted
On October 31, a Chronicle of Higher Education article "Learning the Art of Virtual Instruction" discussed Trevecca Nazarene Universities desire to join the Christian Online Education revolution amongst a fear that it might be too late for them. In the article, TNU's very own Dr. Carol Maxson, the associate provost and dean of academic affairs said "The train had passed us by, and I was hoping that we could grab on to the caboose".
The good news is, our two Christian Institutions of Higher Education have been working together for about a year, and last month, Trevecca offered their first online course using NBC's homegrown distance learning delivery system dCourseWeb. The degree Trevecca has started with is a Master of Organizational Leadership.
To be fair, the article's main focus was about the challenges of properly training instructors to facilitate this somewhat new delivery method. To that end, they wrote about NBC's commitment to prepare our instructors properly. They mentioned the fact that instructors are required to take a two-week Orientation class side-by-side with real students, a six-week graduate level Introduction to Online Teaching class, and finally another graduate level Advanced E-Learning Techniques class before they are allowed to take on a class of their own. They quoted Dr. Phillips our vice president of online academic services and institutional technology who said, "[this] gives us more committed instructors in the end" and "I definitely don't have a shortage of people who would like to teach for us".
Well, it was exciting to read the article that will only be "freely" available for a day or two and I would like to thank Prof. Ron Attig for bringing it to all of our attention. It is a great honor for us to have the opportunity to work with some of the other liberal arts Nazarene institutions of higher education like Trevecca Nazarene University and Olivet Nazarene University and to think that a major national publication like the Chronicle of Higher Education would include us in their article is humbling. In an internal email response to this article, Sandy Sanders wrote, "This is also a great witness for Christ in a secular setting! RAH!" . . . I couldn't agree more.
Published: 11/06/2010
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