University of Texas at Brownsvile – Online Course Offering Doubled Last Year
The University of Texas and Texas Southmost College continues to forge ahead in its continuing effort to providing quality online service and support to its students and faculty involved in online courses. The Office of Distance Education is the principle agency that makes these services possible. This office continuously strives to put technology and technology support services within grasp of all students and faculty. Its vigilance in these matters allows The Office of Distance Education to continually meet with success in offering and supporting its online courses in all modalities.
This continued success is evidenced by the perpetual demand for these types of courses. This demand in turn has generated growth in the number of courses offered as well as the number of students taking these types of courses. In fact, the number of courses offerings has doubled since last year from 67 to 130. Additionally, student enrollment in DE courses has also risen over the past year from 8% to 23%.
Thus, these successes are met with significant advances for developing newer and better services for students. The most impressive of these new developments is a partnership between The Office of Distance Education and The University of Texas at Austin TeleCampus. This partnership will launch Blackboard as UTB/TSC’s new Learning Management System. This will be the official campus platform for all UTB/TSC courses in all of their modalities– hybrid, online and video courses. It will facilitate student and faculty interactions by providing integrated course tools that replace several existing software. It will incorporate innovative teaching with technological know-how to achieve superior course quality. Finally, the simplicity of use and implementation will allow both students and staff to experience a smooth transition into this new learning environment.
As mentioned, quality is the first commitment of The Office of Distance Education. Therefore, as an added benefit to the partnership, TeleCampus is providing top-of-the-line faculty development session. The training sessions will be conducted by experienced TeleCampus staff. Specifically, the trainers will be TeleCampus’ Michael Anderson, UTTC Technology and Course Development Manager and Lori McNabb, UTTC Student and Faculty Services Manager. UTB/TSC and The Office of Distance Education look forward to continued growth and expansion with maintained quality in services and support for all their students and faculty.