Vol State is committed to offering quality online courses. We have systems and resources in place to help faculty create and deliver excellent online courses.
Faculty Teaching Resources
The Best Practices for Online Teaching checklist is a compilation of best practices associated with teaching asynchronous online courses.
For teaching virtual courses, we recommend following the Best Practices for Virtual Teaching.
At a minimum, faculty teaching any online course should follow the First Day of Class Recommendations developed by the Vol State Faculty Council.
Faculty Training and Development
The Office of Distance Learning offers regular faculty training and professional development on the integration of technology into teaching and learning. Topics include the use of the College’s learning management system (eLearn) and other educational technologies, online course design, best practices for distance education, universal design for learning (UDL), accessibility, and more.
All Vol State faculty who teach online or hybrid courses are required to successfully complete eLearn Essentials course within their first semester of teaching. This training is fully online, asynchronous, and self-paced.
Online Course Development
Faculty interested in creating or significantly revising an online or hybrid course should visit our course development process page. This timeline will help you plan your course and complete all the necessary paperwork.
Course Standards
Volunteer State Community College is committed to implementing a minimum set of nationally-normed standards for the design of online and hybrid courses. Our standards assure that the online components of these courses promote learner engagement and provide students with all the tools and information they need to be successful learners. For more information, please review our Guidelines for Online and Hybrid Course Design and Review.
Emphasis on Accessibility
At Vol State, we support access for everyone. In our knowledge base, there are step-by-step guides and video tutorials to help content creators make more accessible, inclusive materials: Accessibility Knowledge Base Articles
