Offered with support of the Office of the Provost, the goal of the “Getting Started Teaching Online at USC” short course is to support and develop a community of faculty who have an interest in developing and teaching high-quality distributed learning courses. This spring, six faculty members successfully completed the third cohort of the course, expanding the pool of faculty who feel prepared to effectively teach online courses at the university.

Course topics included:

• Recognizing online learning best practices
• Examining workload management techniques
• Creating measurable learning outcomes and objectives
• Creating a syllabus suited for an online course
• Recognizing accessibility techniques for individuals with and without disabilities

Even faculty experienced teaching online gained a wealth of knowledge from the course.

“I have learned such a great deal about online teaching even though I have taught online in several previous semesters that it almost makes me feel guilty about not giving my students a better class! Well, that will be rectified in the coming online courses I plan on teaching!

This course has been an eye-opener for me in many ways. Although I was using some of the techniques that are included in this course, I feel so much better prepared to enhance my students learning and my teaching now.

Each graduate of the course received a grant of $750 to support software, professional development opportunities or other purchases to enhance their online teaching practice. Grantees were:

• Nicola Barilla, Evening Program
• Deborah Brosdahl, Department of Retailing
• Eric Rose, Department of History
• Henry Tran, Educational Leadership and Policies
• Kenneth Warble, Philosophy
• Larry Watson, History and African American Studies

If you are new to distributed learning but interested in teaching an online course or would like to become familiar with best practices for teaching in an asynchronous online environment, then consider applying for this eight-week online course.