CCV requires all new faculty to complete an orientation called Great Beginnings. Faculty teaching in any of CCV’s distance education formats or classes with an online component are required to complete Introduction to Online Teaching (IOT).
Great Beginnings is a required orientation for all new faculty members. Facilitated by the Academic Dean’s office, this workshop is designed to introduce instructors to the broader CCV learning community and provide resources and strategies for successfully navigating their first semester at CCV.
Great Beginnings is offered several times each year and must be successfully completed before an instructor can teach at CCV. This workshop is delivered online asynchronously via Canvas, our Learning Management System, over a one-week period beginning on Tuesday and ending on the following Monday. We ask faculty members to participate for a minimum of three hours during the workshop week. Participation over multiple days reflects best practices in online education and is highly encouraged.
Workshop Goals
This workshop will provide faculty with a basic grounding in:
- CCV’s educational philosophy and the Principles of Effective Teaching and Learning
- CCV’s mission, values and deep commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion across the College
- the diversity of the CCV student population including gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic background, language, and learning differences
- a variety of teaching methods, course design, and classroom management strategies that can be used to create an inclusive and equitable learning environment and ensure the effective delivery of the course content
- classroom assessment procedures and the need for developing an on-going feedback loop with students
- the preparation of a specific plan for delivering an effective first class session
It is also designed to:
- respond to participants’ questions and concerns
- generate extra enthusiasm and new ideas for the coming semester
Participation Expectations
To successfully complete Great Beginnings, faculty participants are expected to engage in three workshop modules on the Great Beginnings Canvas course throughout the week. Each module addresses different workshop topics and objectives and includes resources to review and discussion forums to engage in with other participants. To ensure deep exploration and rich conversations, please follow these guidelines:
- Log into the course, introduce yourself, and begin participating no later than Thursday
- Contribute an original post to at least one discussion in each module
- Respond to at least two other posts from other participants in the group throughout the week across all discussions
- Complete your responses on or before the closing date of this session
what’s outlined above. The more you put into the discussion, the more you’ll get out of it!
Great Beginnings Registration
Please contact your Coordinator of Teaching and Learning (CTL) or AcademicDean@ccv.edu for more information.
This training is required of faculty who will be teaching online, synchronously, or in the hyflex or hybrid formats. Teaching online has some fundamental differences from teaching in a traditional classroom. This course introduces you to the expectations and practices at the heart of the differences, setting you and your students on a path to online success. Great teaching can happen anywhere, but teaching online requires different skills, strategies, and tools than in a traditional face-to-face classroom.
In this course you’ll gain proficiency in the unique qualities and perspectives of masterful online teaching, including powerful ways to support the success of online students, how to lay a foundation for a productive learning community, and how to infuse your course with your distinctive presence. We will set you on a path to designing success for you and your students.
What It Is
This course introduces learners to the pedagogy, methodology, and facilitation methods necessary for effective online instruction. Topics will include online course design, facilitating online dialogue, using the web as a resource, building community and collaborative learning in the online classroom, and evaluating the progress of students in online courses.
Introduction to Online Teaching (IOT) is delivered asynchronously, in an online format, using Canvas. Successful completion is required of all online faculty to ensure they are successful in the classroom. It is free to all CCV online faculty candidates and represents our commitment to faculty development and training. This course is required as a prerequisite to teaching any course that falls under the definition of a distance education course, which includes hybrid, hyflex, synchronous and fully online.
Essential Objectives
- Develop an awareness of what it is like to be in the role of student in a virtual environment.
- Discuss theories of learning, instructional techniques, and methods that are effective for online classrooms.
- Practice moderation and facilitation techniques in online communication forums to deepen students’ learning.
- Create a course design and learning activities that integrate information literacy and use the Web as a resource.
- Describe the process of community-building and collaborative learning in an online course.
- Discuss ethical considerations related to designing and teaching online courses.
- Discuss strategies for ongoing assessment and evaluation in online courses.
What It Entails
This course is conducted as a cohort course, and we encourage you to get to know other new online candidates and develop community as you learn more about teaching online at CCV. IOT runs for 6 weeks and the average total time to completion is 20 hours. Faculty must engage throughout the week and actively participate in discussions and assignment completion. Passing the final project, which consists of building two weeks of a course in a Canvas sandbox, is a completion requirement of the course, regardless of grades earned leading up to it.
Please remember that you are considered a candidate for online teaching at CCV. We do not make conditional offers on distance education courses due to the importance of successfully completing IOT. If you have any questions about this process, please reach out to your CTL.
Instructor Availability & Response Time
Your class interaction with your instructor and your classmates will take place in Canvas on a regular, ongoing basis, just as it would in a regular online class. Your instructor will be active in the class throughout each week, and you will normally communicate with them in the Canvas discussion forum so that your questions and the instructor’s answers can benefit the entire cohort. You should send emails directly to your instructor, using CCV email, only when you need to discuss something of a personal or sensitive nature, and in those cases, you will receive a response within 24-48 hours.
Visit the CCV Trainings & Badges page for more information and to register.