One of her many valid points about faculty training deals with the basic premise that faculty who are going to teach online must get the majority of their training online. "They really need to fully get in there and experience what it is like to be in an online class, to be totally communicating online, to do work and pace themselves in an online classroom," says Ko, who has spearheaded Olnet’s three-to-six week online faculty training class now being used by Walden University.

Online faculty training should be as realistic as the course experience as possible. "Faculty participants should have real assignments," says Ko. "They have to be regular participants and be given points or credits based on their progress. And they need to be able to check on their progress and discover that this element is very important to students as well."

"It’s really faculty development," says Ko, adding that Olnet’s training is also a cohort-based experience where faculty are stimulated to ask each other questions.

Additionally, Ko believes that it is important that faculty training be customized enough so that it really does address the actual conditions and the university’s mission. "Not only do you need to have general information about teaching online, and not only specific information about how to use the software, but you also need to prepare people for the expectations of that online program."

On a larger scale, Ko has three broadly defined components that she feels are necessary for facilitating a successful online faculty training program:

- What are the approaches for teaching online?

- What do we know about the pitfalls and how to overcome practical problems, such as work-load issues, student behavior in an online classroom, and the importance of giving certain kinds of instructions to students in an online classroom?

- How do you put together a syllabus for an online classroom and what needs to be added to a syllabus to make it a coherent guiding document for students?

- Are faculty building their own classrooms and/or are they responsible for maintaining their own classroom?

- If there is an online grade book, how do you use it? How do you use the real time chat? How do you upload documents?

- You also need to understand the when and why. For example, when would you use announcements? Is it something you will want to do on a weekly basis to update and encourage students and to show your face in the classroom?

- Are your students expected to participate in real-time activities, or are they expecting the class to be totally asynchronous?

- Is it your responsibility to come up with a particular type of assignment, or is it already set?

- What is your university expecting of you as an online instructor? What kind of responsiveness is expected of you? For example, does your university require you to log in four times a week, every day or three times a week?

- Basically, many elements specific to any particular programdeal with managing the expectations of the faculty about their roles and responsibilities. Additionally, it is important to help make faculty understand what’s expected of students.

Finally, what kind of faculty typically make the best online instructors? While some people may never feel comfortable teaching in a virtual class, the ones who customarily do well are "people, people," says Ko. "I know people may think the opposite, but it is really like any classroom situation. You will connect with people if you are given the skills and the practice. The people who are very gregarious come over great in an online classroom."