These are a few of the distance education teaching resources that Penn State World Campus instructional designers use, maintain, or review to assist students and faculty to create successful learning experience.
Included are listings of downloadable research reports related to teaching online courses and innovations in distance education, World Campus faculty support resources, and useful URLs for e-education.
Research Reports
Note: These reports are Adobe PDF files. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer, you may download a free version by visiting Adobe's Web site.
| Resource/Report |
Description |
| Effective Workload Management Strategies for the Online Environment (Adobe PDF) |
This outlines the findings of a research grant provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2001. The grant primarily explored barriers to faculty engagement in online teaching and learning—the perceived increase in time and energy necessary to design and deliver the educational experience. In this report, experienced faculty in online teaching offer effective strategies for managing workloads. |
| Technical Standards and Pedagogical Guidelines (Adobe PDF) |
These standards and guidelines, which have been approved by the e-Learning Cooperative at Penn State, are the technical standards for online courses offered at Penn State. They are directed to departments and colleges that wish to share online courses with other campuses via the e-Learning Cooperative or with students external to a Penn State geographic location via Penn State's World Campus. |
World Campus Faculty Support Resources
| Resource |
Description |
| Advice for Designing Online |
This site provides a summary of things to consider when using a course bulletin board. |
| Creating a Detailed Course Outline |
This is a descriptive outline of what might be included to prepare a detailed course outline, which is useful in the early stages of course development. |
| Diagnose your Computer |
Diagnosis pages for all World Campus programs, including a "generic" one. |
| Examples of Learning Activities |
The World Campus Instructional Design and Development staff has generated this list of learning activities designed to spark ideas for your own course. |
| Find Your Penn State World Campus Course |
This shows you all the courses to which you have access; You'll need to enter your Penn State Access Account user ID and password. |
| Glossary of Distance Education Terms |
This page contains a glossary of basic distance education terms that was compiled by Michael G. Moore and Kay Shattuck. |
| New Course Questionnaire |
This is a list of questions commonly addressed by instructional designers and course authors during initial project meetings. |
| What's the Role of a Guest Speaker? Sample Guidelines. |
Incorporating a guest speaker into a distance education course can be a great way to bring up-to-the-minute expertise to a cohort-based course. The guest speaker will, of course, want to know what he or she is getting into! To aid the speaker, a set of guidelines was put together for an Adult Education course that might be useful to "borrow" for other courses. |
| World Campus 101 |
A student orientation "course" designed to help new and prospective students become acquainted with the World Campus and with the skills they'll need to be successful distance learners. |
| World Campus Instructor FAQs |
This link offers frequently asked questions (and their answers!) for World Campus instructors. |
| World Campus Tech Support |
Tech Support provides faculty training and support for World Campus faculty. |
