All VTSU faculty who are involved with, or who would like to learn more about online or hybrid learning are invited to take advantage of the VTSU Membership with the Online Learning Consortium.
What is the Online Learning Consortium (OLC)?
OLC is a vibrant community dedicated to advancing quality online, blended, and digital learning in higher education. Founded in 1999 as the Sloan Consortium, OLC has been at the forefront of online education for over two decades. It brings together diverse professionals, including faculty, administrators, and instructional designers, offering extensive resources, original research, and professional development opportunities. OLC also provides quality standards tools to help institutions and faculty enhance their online programs.
How do VTSU faculty access the VTSU institutional membership?
Go to https://my.onlinelearningconsortium.org/ and click on “Create an Account.” Please use your @vermontstate.edu or @vsc.edu email address as your username, which will create the affiliation with the institutional membership. OLC has several newsletter groups you can opt-in to when creating your profile. If you choose to only opt-in to one newsletter, choose OLC Today. This newsletter covers noteworthy content as well as updates across OLC. This newsletter is sent every Tuesday.
What are the free benefits and opportunities for faculty?
All OLC webinars are free with institutional membership. These tend to last one-hour. In addition to upcoming webinars, many recent ones are available through the “on demand” option.
The peer-reviewed journal Online Learning is published quarterly and is dedicated to the development and dissemination of new knowledge at the intersection of pedagogy, emerging technology, policy, and practice in online environments
What additional professional development opportunities exist through OLC?
OLC’s highly regarded Online Teaching Certificate Program is discounted for institutional members. Leading from the conceptual to the implementation of online learning best practices, the Certificate is offered as a sequence of one foundation course, followed by elective courses and creation or revision of an online course under the guidance of a mentor. At the end of this program, participants will be prepared to design and develop a complete online or blended course based on current research and best practices.
OLC offers discounted workshops geared to faculty on a range of topics from artificial intelligence to trauma-informed pedagogy.
OLC sponsors two annual conferences: Innovate (spring) and Accelerate (fall). Innovate focuses on driving innovation in the realm of online, digital, and blended learning while Accelerate shares research and best practice related to these topics.