Consider NDSU Sponsored On-line Professional Development Opportunity for Free in Spring 2004

Last year, this opportunity was enjoyed by several faculty (see www.ndsu.edu/opd).
The current offering is limited to about 50 faculty members, so please make sure to sign-up right away.

Consider NDSU Sponsored On-line Professional Development Opportunity for Free in Spring 2003

NDSU has contracted to make available Professional Development (PD) Online courses about improvement of instruction for NDSU faculty. There are twenty-four online courses ranging from "Crafting a Curriculum" to "Designing Performance Assessment"
(please visit http://www.ascd.org/trainingopportunities/pdonline_sample.html).

Each PD Online course includes interactive lessons that have been specially designed for Web-based training and each lesson is supplemented with reading material and access to discussion groups. This provides an opportunity to develop your knowledge and skills at a time that fits your schedule. The interactive, multimedia courses offered through PD Online allows flexibility without sacrificing meaningful content or the chance to discuss what you learn with colleagues.

The goal is to meet with small groups of NDSU colleagues (3 to 5 members) who are interested in the same course (last year's participants really enjoyed the group discussion). The group may meet about once a month over a lunch. The participants will be provided with three buffet lunch coupons for their group meetings.

At the end of the semester, each participant will submit a short (less than one-page report) about what ideas were most useful. These reports will be posted on the web, similar to what was done last year. Provost Schnell will recognize those who complete a course with a certificate at a year-end noon banquet.

Sudhir Mehta, Associate VPAA, and Ed Deckard, Co-Founder of the Plant Sciences' Teaching Circle, have developed the NDSU program in collaboration with the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development. ASCD's main focus is on K-12, but most of the instructional principles apply to college educators also.

Interested faculty need to e-mail Ed Deckard (edward.deckard@ndsu.nodak.edu) stating which online course they wish to enroll. Before registering, please visit http://www.ascd.org/trainingopportunities/pdonline_sample.html to sample the courses. The deadline for e-mail response is Wednesday, January 21, 2004.

Ed Deckard will provide enrollees an activation key, password, registration instructions, and names of their group members by January 23, 2004. This activation key can only be used for one course. The Participant will have six months, from the time of activation, to complete the course before the password expires.