University of North Texas

Today my visit took me to the University of North Texas at Denton, Texas. Denton is located near Dallas. The University has 34,000 enrolments with 2,500 enrolments being totally online courses and 12,000 partly online.

My contact at the University of North Texas was Dr Philip Turner, Vice Provost for Learning Enhancement. Dr Turner leads all types of innovation with e-learning at the University; he leads the Centre for Teaching,Learning and Assessment and he also heads an innovative project at the University entitled the UNT Quality Enhancement Plan.

The Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) is all about 'Next Generation Web Design' http://QEP.unt.edu is 'designed to help faculty members and support staff to work together to transform the student learning experience in large enrolment undergraduate classes'. Interdisciplinary teams work together to upgrade exisiting online courses, or place existing face to face courses online 'engaging, encouraging and enabling faculty members to investigate and apply innovative and instructional techniques'. I was privileged to see some of the incredible instructional design techniques being used with subject content.

As part of my visit, Philip invited me to attend a production meeting at the Centre for Distributed Learning Production. The meeting was attended by Faculty and staff from the Centre for Distributed Learning and the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment. Thank you all for allowing me to be in attendance and gain such an insight into the team work that obviously occurs at CDL. It was inspirational listening to subject specialists and technological experts sharing ideas making decisions;moving forward with your projects and work; in Philips' words 'bringing the 21st Century to the University'.

Thank you Philip for welcoming me so warmly and to all the Faculty and staff for allowing me to be present at your meeting.

written by

Sally Delaney on May 8, 2007 from Dallas, United States

from the travel blog: Sally DeLearning - American Style 2007

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