I was recruited by the College’s Academic Dean in 2009 to guide the design and development of its new online programs—the first online Master’s programs in population health in the country. Since the summer of 2019, I have also been working with a new team of Assistant Provosts to promote good practices in online education across the campus.   

I began at Jefferson in a consultative role in 2009 and joined Jefferson as a full-time employee in 2012. With each passing year, more Colleges have been doing more online. Because the Colleges have diverse missions and student populations, they each have quite different needs when it comes to engaging with students online. As a result, each year has brought more variety to what’s happening in online learning across the campus.

Research has shown that going back to at least 2010, faculty in institutions of higher education across the country who wanted or needed to teach online were already doing so. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed most everyone else into teaching online or virtually now.  

Because the hardest part of teaching online is usually getting started, many faculty who have now gotten started will find at least some aspects of online instruction very useful and effective. So, I expect that we’ll not only have a lot more ‘flipped’ classrooms in the fall, we’ll have even more online instruction happening in 2021 as institutions get caught up, and faculty build on what they’ve discovered they like about online. Education will continue to become more distributed as well, with students less tied down to a single campus all the time.

The Center’s personnel work very collaboratively, so we usually take up issues as a group. At the same time, we each have areas of special interest and experience. I tend to focus on matters relating to online education and programs, and I’m especially interested in assessing learning outcomes in online environments.  

We support online learning by identifying faculty and student needs and working to provide the resources and the training to meet those needs. We bring resources together, organize training curricula, and hold workshops. We also advocate for online faculty and students in conversation with University leadership.

This new Canvas site supports a growing community of educators across Jefferson who are developing online instruction. The site provides participants with moderated discussion forums, a curated collection of resources on a wide range of topics, and archives of materials used during live events. The site will evolve as the needs and interests of this community do.

To join the Canvas channel: Make sure you are using Canvas. If you have a Canvas account, the channel will be visible in your Canvas page. If you have any questions, contact the CFDNL team.

I began building online courses in the late 90s while working as a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University, Japan.