In the online courses teaching and learning is based on a "collaborative learning and reflection on practice" approach conducted through interactive computer-based communications and journaling methodologies. This process is not a standard distance education process in which teaching is transmitted from a central point. Distance has little meaning in this context because the learning activities might take place in an adjacent room, in homes and workplaces or at many widely dispersed sites throughout the state, nation, and the world.

The delivery system using an online computer based technique is built around a collaborative education approach. This style of teaching and learning requires constant interaction between students in their various locations, and between students and the instruction team when deemed appropriate. Interaction will be expected on a daily basis through receipt and response to documents from other students and the instruction team.

Distributed collaborative learning takes place through "virtual groups" whose members are widely distributed geographically. Some of the costs associated with personal displacement, career disruption, and other costs associated with attendance at the university are avoided.

Faculty flexibility and optimum use of teaching resources can best be achieved through team teaching in which each course will have a team leader and a minimum of one other faculty member. The main task for the teams will be to encourage and lead learning conversations among the students. They will pose questions, facilitate communication, and assess outcomes.

Printed materials, computer software, and audio-visual materials are utilized to create the maximum possible degree of interaction between students, and between students and teaching team members. The primary vehicle is online education designed to permit distributed collaboration. A guiding principle in that learning is the responsibility of the student with faculty facilitating the process through encouragement, guidance and leadership. Wherever possible a partnership with a local institution will be established and a mentor or "in situ" advisor will be appointed.

Collaborative Education:

Online education involves the use of computer networking systems to support collaborative education in program delivery. Some of its more important characteristics are:

Students and instructors do not have to meet at the same time because the computer stores their communications. Online education is available at any hour of the day or night, seven days a week.

• Students can communicate with one another to promote collaborative learning. This is increasingly understood to be as important a part of the learning process as student-to-teacher communications.
• The computer provides specialized communication structures that can actually improve on what can be done in face-to-face classes. For example, if the instructor asks a discussion question, the computer can prevent a student from seeing the other answers until his/her own answer has been supplied.
• The technology is inherently cheaper than telephone or video conferencing for providing communications.

Collaborative education as used in this program assumes that knowledge is socially constructed and that learning is socially interdependent. Knowledge is seen as an interdependent construction arising from conversation. It is not an entity that is transferred from teacher to student. Traditionally the relationship between thought and conversation is that people can talk with each other because they think. A contrary view is that people can think because they talk with each other. In this sense reflective thought is an internalized social conversation. These concepts form the foundations on which the program delivery is based.

Journaling

Journaling is used in many of the courses and is considered a valuable tool for analysis and reflection. It is a reconstruction of experience through which more extensive reflection and experience might arise and cause perspectives to broaden and a deeper understanding of the original experience to grow. A journal is a personal document, which assists thinking clarification and the pursuit of issues that might arise from the reflective process. It may be thought of as a displaced conversation and as providing further opportunities for strengthening the collaborative learning process. Students will be encouraged to add a further dimension by sharing their journal, or parts of it, with their mentors as a basis for the conversation that is an essential part of the mentor-mentee relationship.

Masters Degrees

Doctoral Degree (Ed.D.)

Certificate of Specialization (6-year)

Certificate Endorsement only