Instructional design firm iDesign's new Online Teaching course will provide faculty with high quality professional learning experiences

DALLAS, March 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Instructional design firm iDesign, which has worked with more than 100 institutions to design, build and support their online courses, today announced that it will make its Online Teaching course available to faculty for free for the next six months in response to the coronavirus outbreak. The courses provide faculty with an immediate primer on best practices in online teaching.

"Teaching well online isn't about technology. It's about people. It's about pedagogy. These are resources developed for faculty by experts in online learning who understand, and can share their insight and best practices, from the experience of transitioning online," said Whitney Kilgore, chief academic officer at iDesign. "Adaptation isn't new to higher education. Colleges and universities -- and their faculty -- have shown a remarkable capacity for resilience, innovation and adaptation even in the face of difficulty."

The five-part professional development program focuses on helping educators recognize and debunk myths around online learning, develop high-impact practices to support peer-to-peer collaboration, communicate expectations and feedback clearly to students with diverse needs and access to resources, and form meaningful connections with learners in spite of physical distance.

Through the short-form courses, faculty and other higher education professionals will be able to access self-paced content, turnkey teaching resources, practice examples, and proven techniques used by experienced online instructors.

Enrollment begins today and the courses will be available on a rolling basis beginning Friday March 20. The online teaching bootcamp will be offered on iDesign's LX Pathways. For more information, visit the LX Pathways website.

Faculty members looking for additional resources can access an open source list of teaching resources by visiting the Remote Teaching Resources for Business Continuity, managed by Daniel Stanford of DePaul University's Center for Teaching and Learning. Additionally, higher education professionals can utilize the iDea book available as an open source creative commons licensed resource which is part of iDesign's commitment to Scholarship not SWAG.

‍