“…At DWC we wanted a custom, blended learning solution providing practical skills and an end product using WebCT. The results have exceeded our expectations. Our international faculty, from many distinguished programs, have given highly favorable reviews of the facultytraining.net course with oft-repeated praise for it’s practicality and focus.”

— Garry Hall
Supervisor, Library and Independent Learning Centre
Dubai Women’s College, United Arab Emirates

“…After a nationwide search for the “best of class” training, the Michigan Virtual University selected facultytraining.net to design training we’ve delivered on Blackboard to more than 450 instructors from the Michigan higher education sector. The OIT course was a success by any metric used, with many reporting the training was the most significant professional experience of their careers.”

— Tom Schumann
Vice-President, Academic Affairs
Michigan Virtual University

“…As director of the Center for Distributed Education I found in Mark a strategic partner—someone who could advocate sound instructional design while modeling a proactive facilitation style. His enthusiasm and creativity have been immensely helpful as we have grown from an online enrollment of a few hundred to over 10,000 today.”

— Steve Zlotolow
Associate Dean, International and Extended Studies
San Jose State University

Post-course evaluations by participants:

The course is a great way to prepare for the world of online instruction. I would go so far as to say that ALL instructors should take this course, regardless of whether they are teaching online or in the classroom. I continually kept thinking "I wish I had taken this course when I started teaching 15 years ago!"

I think the course you have put together is excellent. The support was total in terms of lectures, online tutorials and personal support. Things on 'our side' made the going very tough and WebCT was always put on the back burner…Finally, at a personal level thanks for your '100% human approach' to teaching and learning and your patience while we laggards finally caught up!

Thanks for making WebCT intelligible at last! It's been hovering over us for as long as I've been in the college, (almost 6 years) and has always been delivered to us in fragments, never in your highly systematic way that combines theory with practice. Of course different people will have different ideas about the "correct" balance of theory and practice, all depending of their own learning preferences and their own perceived strengths and weaknesses. I liked the fact that it was a technical course delivered within a sound theoretical framework, with just enough reference to the literature.

I am not a teacher and as a Librarian and Supervisor the reality is that I doubt I will have the time or opportunity to continue creating courses via WebCT. But I supervise staff that will be creating courses. What this course gave me is a clear understanding of what WebCT is and what it can do – and how it can be applied. Initially I found the lectures hard to get through, but even these gave me a good understanding of the theory behind online instruction. I think when we started the course it was easy to criticize the course – but we got used to the style and as we progressed we realized just how much work you had put into this course. It was actually quite exciting building the site and sharing and seeing what other colleagues were doing.

We have already begun to incorporate WebCT into our Year One Semester 2 program: these are the lowest language levels of students in the college, but they've spent the last couple of days using Chat, sending emails, getting into Discussion... So overall: thanks for helping us to do something new! Thanks also for your personalised responses to our work as we progressed through the seminars. You made it very clear throughout that there was a teacherly presence at the other end, monitoring our individual efforts and contributions and intervening at just the right moments. This provided a good model for our own use of WebCT. Thanks, Mark!

This course was like a shot of adrenaline, giving me more energy and motivation to change the way I do some things. The feedback received from the community, was also a plus because most times in traditional schools most feedback turns into a berating of the system and those who run it. It was wonderful having constructive criticism because it gave me some ideas of how I can approach my students in the classroom and also online.

It is evident you are a seasoned facilitator. My struggle has been with ME. As an undergraduate lecturer for over 30 years and a novice at computer skills my lack of training in instructional design and computer technology is at times not only frustrating but downright intimidating. Thanks for your patience and encouragement.

Mark, I thoroughly enjoyed the course! You exhibited many of the qualities of effective teaching, online OR onground: knowledge of the subject, balance of getting involved and letting us go, sense of humor, investment of yourself in the process, patience and understanding with the unforeseeable, ability to challenge your students to think and gooutside the box, ability to at the same time affirm our work and yet constructively critique our work, and an overall relational warmth that made me feel like a colleague and not a subordinate...

I really liked how you approached the training - setting the scene with the theoretical background and then moving on to the nuts and bolts. I think the theoretical aspect was important to get us to think about putting a real course together. This approach to building a course requires a great deal of work, but the outcome is a good solid useable curriculum! The seminars were easy to follow, packed with skills building activities and basic enough for a newcomer to navigate through and feel a sense of accomplishment.

I was surprised and delighted to encounter the rational approach to dealing with "students as learners" that permeates this course... having suffered, like no doubt all of my colleagues here, from less than democratic approaches in my own education! There is a democratic revolution underway in education, and it was a real honor to participate in a course that acknowledges and helps bring about this shift. Kudos!

Now I feel confident about approaching this new adventure and feel I'm properly equipped. I know how to design and set up online delivery. I know how to troubleshoot. I know much more what to expect. And I have a sense of the "bigger picture" of education and how online learning fits in. Here in the end, I feel I've been successful in addressing the needs of a unique audience, yet I've maintained enough flexibility to work with different learning needs.