Online learning (OL) courses help faculty improve skills for online teaching and service. The courses are open to all current Penn State faculty, staff, and graduate students and are offered in a self-directed or instructor-led format. Self-directed courses can be completed at your own pace. Instructor-led courses are facilitated by Penn State faculty and simulate the online student experience.
All self-guided courses must be completed within 60 days of registering and no later than December 31.
OL 1200: Student Support and Advocacy in Online Learning
At times, students face personal challenges or have emotional needs that impact their academic progress, social development, or emotional well-being. Instructors may be the first point of contact for students experiencing external stress, presenting them with the opportunity to recognize signs of stress before others do. This course will teach you where to direct students for assistance, when to handle concerns yourself, how to identify urgent concerns, best practices for alleviating stress, and how to foster an inclusive learning environment.
OL 2600.01 Accessible Online Course Authoring
This course equips course authors and instructors with knowledge about accessible web practices and course design that can be applied when creating and adding content in Canvas. Beyond teaching standard accessibility best practices for authoring in Canvas, this course also aims to provide a broader perspective on World Campus students and why implementing these practices matters for them.
OL 3000.01 Supporting Accommodations for Online Learners
At some point in your teaching, you’ll be notified that a student needs an accommodation. Often, this may confront you with a question or dilemma requiring action from you, perhaps well before you fully understand all of the issues, protocols, or possible solutions. To simulate such situations and prepare you to handle them, this course forgoes the standard online course framework and instead presents a scenario that situates you in an accommodation-related problem at the beginning of each module.
OL 3100.01 Teaching the Adult Learner
According to the American Council on Education, more than 50 percent of students are adult learners. These numbers continue to grow as these individuals seek to advance in their career, obtain a degree to stay competitive, retrain for a new position, or pursue a new career. This course will teach you how to differentiate the characteristics and needs of traditional students (18- to 22-year-olds) from those of adult learners in order to help you best teach them.
OL 3200.01 Serving Military-Connected Students
Most World Campus instructors will encounter students with a connection to the U.S. Armed Forces: currently serving members, former members, retirees, or dependents of a service member. This course will introduce you to military-connected students at Penn State and teach you how to best support them. It is designed as a mission-oriented experience to provide you with a glimpse into the life of an active-duty service member.
OL 3600.01 Universal Design for Learning
In this introductory course on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), you will be presented with rationales and research that support designing learning experiences with UDL in mind, read scenarios about applications of UDL, and reflect on ways you can change your current practice. This course isn’t a checklist for achieving UDL — UDL isn’t a course status; it’s an ideal that guides instructor practice and course design. Note Although accessibility is an integral part of UDL, this course will not teach you how to design an accessible course. However, it will help you make your course more accessible, engaging, and flexible.
OL 3800.01 Excellence in Academic Advising
This course examines the foundations of academic advising as essential components of student success and retention in higher education. Topics include the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of academic advising; the Penn State curriculum and student record systems; advising skills, including advising diverse student populations; the legal and ethical issues in academic advising; and advising technology at Penn State.
OL 3855.01 Empowering Conversations: Interacting with Student Supporters
As faculty and staff, we find ourselves partnering more often with supporters of our learners, from our youngest learners to those returning to college or experiencing college for the first time well after high school. These collaborative partnerships often extend to our students’ supporters outside of Penn State (e.g., parents, partners, siblings, advocates, employers, or close friends).
OL 3875.01 Excellence in Academic Advising: Career Advising
Although career advising isn’t the primary role of an academic adviser, holistic academic advising involves more than just course selection. Students routinely ask academic advisers career-related questions. The purpose of this course is to inform the career conversations you have with students and support you in identifying suitable referrals to career professionals and resources at Penn State.
Course registration closes two weeks before the start date for instructor-led courses. All course work should be completed within the designated course timeline. Courses begin on the first Monday of the designated month. If that date falls on a national or university holiday, participants will be notified of the start date.
For planning purposes, all instructor-led courses are listed with the months they are typically available.
OL 2000: Essentials of Online TeachingOffered: February, April, June, July, October
OL 2050: Essentials of Online Teaching for Graduate StudentsOffered: May, September
OL 2150: Canvas Hands OnOffered: March, June, July
OL 2200: Assessment of Online LearnersOffered: June, October
OL 2300: Teamwork in Online Teaching and LearningOffered:
OL 2450: Integrating Open Educational Resources into Your CourseOffered: February, June
OL 3300: Teaching the International StudentOffered:
OL 3400: Online Course DesignOffered: March, September
OL 3500: Gamification in Online Teaching and LearningOffered: April