All of us were raised in the traditional classroom environment, with classrooms, desk and chairs, a blackboard with dusty erasers, and the teacher standing at the front of the room. Buy modeling these recognizable behaviors, most instructors have little problem in developing and teaching a seat-based course without specific guidance in methodology.

But what about the Web-based classroom? Very few instructors have experience as students in this environment and therefore have no example to follow when designing or teaching online.

For this reason, The Department of Distance Learning now has available the PT-ID team. PT-ID stands for part-time instructional designers and is made up of several DMC faculty that have proven experience in the design and instruction of Web-based courses. The PT-ID team offers a number of services to DMC faculty, including:

• Online course design assistance:
• The PT-ID team, along with experts in WebCT and Library electronic resources, will provide assistance in any area of course design. This may be assistance with an entire course that is still in development stages, ideas on how to properly assess students, how to incorporate interactivity into a Web-based course (a requirement of SACS), or orienting students to the course. To schedule a meeting with the PT-ID team, contact the DL Director at 698-1980 or email jgetchell@delmar.edu .

• Online course reviews
• Do you teach an online course? Ever wonder how well it stacks up with "the norm?" Then schedule a course review with the PT-ID team. In a course review, the instructor gives student access to the PT-ID team for the course you want reviewed. Then, using a rubric based on the Quality Matters project, the PT-ID team reviews your course on a number of criteria including navigation, assessment, interactivity, and others. Once completed, all results and comments are compiled and sent back to the instructor. An optional followup meeting is to discuss the results of the review. Many times, a coruse review is followed up with a course design assistance meeting to discuss ways of incorporating the ideas mentioned in the course review. To schedule a course review with the PT-ID team, contact the DL Director at 698-1980 or email jgetchell@delmar.edu .

• Experimenting with learning technologies
• One of the more fun duties of the PT-ID team is to experiment with various learning technologies. Approximately once per month the team will select a learning technology and try it out to see if it has usefulness in DMC classrooms. Examples of past technologies include Sony IVE and Elluminate. Future learning technologies to be examined include Skype (VoIP), Captivate, and Active Worlds (a virtual environment).

PT-ID Podcasts