Online Learning Face To Face

I finished my doctoral program with over 120 graduate hours. Only 60 of those were required to graduate, but I kept taking courses. After all, we were inventing educational technology during those years!

Every semester there would be new courses created and offered for the first time. And I’d stick around to take them. Eventually my husband said “Why don’t you finish your dissertation, then you can go back and keep taking courses for as long as you want?”

I thought it was a brilliant idea, so I wrote my dissertation over Spring Break, defended and graduated that spring.

Of course, I never went back to take any more courses. By then I was hired by the University of Texas to teach them!

I was also hired by several other groups to teach courses. The Higher Education Institute and Classroom Connect were two of those organizations.

Classroom Connect had a unique model. They held large multi-day conferences around the country for teachers. As an instructor for them I would teach two or three classes multiple times over the three days. Then we would do it again in another city.

Classroom Connect was also one of the first organizations to see that not all teachers could travel to one of their conferences. But they all wanted the information. So they started an Online University.

With a PhD in Instructional Design and my face-to-face teaching experience, as well as prior online learning experience, I was a logical choice to write and pilot some of their core courses.

I then leveraged that experience into creating the curriculum and core for the T.H.E Institute Online University.

Online Learning has been a core skill of mine for more than 20 years. So it was no surprise that I recently returned to my core – and released Design Your Online Course. It takes all of the academic principles I’ve used for years – and updated them into a Practical Model.

The key principle here is to recognize your core skills. And go back to them often. Not only does it feel good, but it’s also easier to create from your core. And the caliber of your products increases as you pull from your core.

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