Division of Continuing Education: June Blackwelder
The Division of Continuing Education provides support to departments for teaching in non-traditional ways. They contract with and pay faculty to develop and teach distance learning courses. Continuing Education does the marketing, enrolls the students, handles the money, and handles the evaluation process. They have been offering courses for 85 years, since 1913. Courses have been offered by correspondence, with assignments sent in by US mail. Some print-based courses have been enhanced with new components, such as TV, audio/video cassettes, Web, and e-mail.
Continuing Education does not offer a degree entirely via the Internet. Interactivity is used to enhance training. There are no class meetings. Students work entirely on their own.
Carolina Courses Online are taught in the Fall and Spring semesters. Everyone is on the same schedule. Continuing Education administers the courses. Departments originate and teach them. The program started with four courses. Now 12 are being offered and a 13th is ready. The Chancellor's technology grants are assisting some faculty.
Currently there are 63 enrolled. Most are working toward a degree. Most are in NC, many in RTP. Eight are out of state, one in Florida, one in Germany. More are female than male. Ages are 19-45 with clusters 19-22 and 25-35.
http://www.fridaycenter.unc.edu/cco/ gives general information and what's offered. There are some sample pages.
There is no online enrollment yet. You can download the form.
The course pages have a recognizable look, common logo, and clear, simple navigation. Courses are password protected.
June and a staff of two are doing the HTML, using Claris HomePage. They are using Center for Instructional Technology tools, such as the Web-based discussion forums and Quiz Builder. Forums vary in how active they are. They bring out some students.
Hardware requirements are specifed on the Web page.
School of Public Health
David Potenziani described the work environment. The organization is a network of people -- registrar, faculty, designer, webmaster, and teaching assistant -- working as equals on a team. Task organization involves:
Constance Humphries showed courses developed at http://cdlhc.sph.unc.edu using Web CT (http://www.unc.edu/cit/services/webct.html. She showed http://cdlhc.sph.unc.edu/greenhouse/, animation, and Bob Schreiner's course, HPAA155, which uses PowerPoint with audio (RealPlayer). Bob did the work himself. Real syncs voice with PowerPoint.
She showed http://cdlhc.sph.unc.edu/dl_courses/epid160/sb. The course pages have a consistent look and feel.
When students are done, they upload assignments. They can see the assignment is there, but they don't believe it. Students don't trust technology. They e-mail, then FAX, then telephone. Courses that use technology need to give good confirmations.
Public Health has an obstacle course that students must complete before they can register for a class -- http://cdlhc.sph.unc.edu/edusit/skills/.
Constance cautioned not to change technology in mid term.
Judy Hallman (judy_hallman@unc.edu, http://www.unc.edu/~hallman/)
Campus Webmaster, UNC-Chapel Hill
Last modified:
1999 Mar 14