New Faculty

Below you’ll find the early administrative and training tasks that all new faculty need to complete. It’s especially helpful to get a quick jump on steps 1-3 below, as these things need to be in place to create your faculty accounts and make sure you are registered for required trainings.

CCV Human Resources will send you onboarding documents to get the process started. Your Coordinator of Teaching and Learning (CTL) is available to support you each step of the way, so please reach out at  any point with any questions.

 The following steps ensure you are fully set up as an employee and an active faculty member, with full access to CCV technology and resources.

1. Complete Vermont State College System (VSCS) Human Resources (HR) paperwork received via email from CCV HR.
2. Complete your criminal background check following directions provided by CCV HR.
3. Complete your I-9 verification, which requires a very brief Zoom or in-person meeting with HR staff.
4. Claim VSC email account following instructions from VSCS HR Team — this will be sent once the above item is complete.
5. Log in to the UKG (HR) site following VSC HR Team’s instructions.
6. Log in to CCV e-mail: https://outlook.office365.com/
7. Once steps are complete, send your hiring CTL an email from your CCV email account. Your CTL will then send you a course offer, you can accept, and your Canvas page will be created.
8. Order textbooks: https://fast.ecampus.com/
9. Complete required training assigned by VSC HR Team. This is a training from United Educators that covers the Clery Act and Title IX. VSC HR sends a link to all active faculty (and full-time staff) to complete the trainings annually.
10. Submit official transcripts to Bridget M. Donnelly at bridget.donnelly@ccv.edu or to the mailing address noted below.
    
    Note: Transcripts are considered official when they are sent directly to Bridget/the Academic Dean’s office from the degree-granting institution or are forwarded to Bridget by you in a sealed envelope from the school. If a degree is from an institution outside the U.S., the process is a little different. Please reach out to your CTL or Bridget for assistance.
    
    Bridget Donnelly
    Office of the Academic Dean
    Community College of Vermont
    P.O. Box 489
    Montpelier, VT 05601
11. Contact your CTL to register for an upcoming offering of Great Beginnings (GB), the new faculty online orientation course. All new faculty must complete GB to be eligible to teach at CCV.

1. If teaching an in-person class, contact your CTL to set up a visit to tour the academic center where your class in scheduled.
2. If teaching a 4-credit lab science:
   • Set up a time with your CTL to meet in the lab to go over procedures and lab safety.
   • Submit science supply orders—you will receive an ordering template from me.
   • Self-enroll in the CCV-Allied Health & Science Resources Canvas page.
3. If teaching a course that is not a 4-credit lab science, but you think you need a course fee for materials, contact your CTL ASAP.
4. If teaching a course that includes field trips, please review the field trip information.
5. Your Canvas course will be open to you 90 days before your course begins. Once it appears on your dashboard, start exploring and building.
6. Your course syllabus is due 30 days before your course begins. However, students use syllabi to choose course sections, so the sooner it’s done and published, the better. To prepare your syllabus, view the How to Build Your Course Syllabus resource page.
7. You must have the first week’s module in Canvas open to students at least one week before your course begins. It’s also important to build a Canvas gradebook that aligns with your course syllabus by the start of class.
8. New to Canvas? Consider completing this self-paced orientation.
9. Aviso is the tool we use to track attendance and communicate with advisors. If you want to get a jump start before the semester, view our introduction to Aviso resource page.

This is a self-paced Canvas Faculty Orientation course designed to familiarize faculty with the basic need-to-know tools and features of Canvas to prepare them for course design and delivery. It does not address the pedagogy of teaching online, but it’s a great place to start for those new to Canvas.

The course is broken into 5 modules (total of 19 individual very short lessons). Each module should take about 30-45 minutes to read, review, and complete. It is recommended that participants complete the modules in sequential order; however, it is not required. Anyone can self-enroll.

These guides are accessed by clicking on the Help Button in the Canvas navigation menu along the left margin in your class. The button provides access to a Chat with Canvas Support, Canvas Support Hotline, a link to Report a Problem, Yuja Support, and much more. It also includes a vast collection of videos and questions and answers from the Canvas community. Pro tip: if you Google your Canvas questions, they sometimes lead you back to these guides – and it’s quicker!

Facilitated by long-time Canvas users, these hour-long workshops are designed for instructors who are new to Canvas and prefer to participate in a real-time, interactive workshop. This session will cover basic Canvas course navigation tools, review how to set up a Canvas gradebook, and explore tips and best practices to make the most of your Canvas course site. Bring your questions!

These workshops are usually offered a few weeks before the start of a new semester. They are included in the Academic Dean’s monthly email highlighting professional development opportunities.

CTLs are always available to provide an introduction to Canvas and hands-on help learning how to use basic Canvas tools and features. They can offer both technical guidance and pedagogical suggestions to help you create a course that’s engaging and easy to navigate. CTLs are also available to troubleshoot Canvas-related issues and questions that arise during the semester – and if they can’t answer a specific question, they’ll help you find a resource that can!

CLT support is just an email or a phone call away – please reach out!

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

Please feel free to contribute even more to the discussion than what’s outlined above. The more you put into the discussion, the more you’ll get out of it!

Great Beginnings Registration

• Dec 2-8, 2025

• Jan 6-12, 2026

• May 5-11, 2026

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.