A look at Florida State University’s (FSU) Office for Distributed and Distance Learning (ODDL) can be seen as a good barometer of how this institution, with a population of 37,000 students, supports its "citizens" within the domain of education technology support initiatives.

The following description of the majority of services ODDL provides is based on a recent telephone interview conducted with ODDL Director Lawrence Dennis.

Beginning with how FSU providers instructor support (http://online.fsu.edu/instructor/), five instructional designers are responsible for assisting faculty with putting their courses online (fully online or hybrids). Two faculty trainers are responsible for teaching faculty and teaching assistants how to use Blackboard.

A good number of faculty workshops in how to use technology are provided by ODDL. From September 13 through October 13, for example, 17 workshops under the banner of "instructional development" were scheduled, covering such topics as testing and grading, online discussions, beginning PowerPoint, and how to use Blackboard to support classroom learning. During the summer months, faculty are provided with incentives (37 percent of their normal salary for teaching a class) to participate in some of these workshops, which can vary in length from two to six weeks.

Also, an instructional development service group of five individuals is responsible for helping faculty improve their instructional techniques whether it be for on-campus or online instruction. "Our Provost identifies faculty who are not getting high enough evaluations from students, and he suggests they get some help (from the instructional development service group), and usually they do," said Dennis. The service group is comprised of outstanding instructors who have a keen understanding of Web-based teaching and learning strategies. "Our approach has been to use technology as a hook," added Dennis. "It helps faculty who have problems get organized."

A digital media production group (DMPG) is comprised of approximately six people that, according to their Web site, "support faculty development of Web-supported and distance learning courses, as well as the development of complete degree distance programs at both the bachelor’s and master’s level. While ODDL has responsibility for coordinating all phases of our program to support innovation in teaching and learning, DMPG is focused on providing the resources faculty need to develop high-quality distance courses and degree programs." Visit www.fsu.edu/~dmpg/ to see a video clip of this group’s many audio, video, print, digital imaging and Web development services. An interesting function of DMPG is the production of ODDL’s WebStars site (http://online.fsu.edu/webstars/). Here "we highlight faculty who we think are using the Web in ways that we would like others to emulate," Dennis said. About 12 faculty bios are rotated through the WebStars site every semester during the first four weeks of class, and then students are highlighted over the next 8 to 12 weeks of the semester. Additionally, another section of the WebStars site has a "Star Strategies" section that features effective teaching practices that include online components that may have applications in both face-to-face and fully online courses.

Two full-time editors help with writing the WebStars content, as well as helping faculty with writing content for their Web sites. There’s also a well-written and interesting in-house online publication called "Online/FYI" (http://online.fsu.edu/fyi/) that editors work on. Dennis added that the editors, through their work over time, have learned "an awful lot" about education technology issues and strategies and have "become increasingly valuable in showing us how we should present our message to the rest of the world."

Another important group under the auspices of ODDL is the Blackboard support group, which is responsible for answering questions from only FSU faculty about its course management software functions and techniques. A large university help desk, which is outside of ODDL, deals with students who have questions about Blackboard. The faculty Blackboard support comes from a current staff of four, with a current search on for two more support specialists. "They basically manage the Blackboard software and do whatever development we need to do within Blackboard to customize it to the needs of the faculty," Dennis said. "They are very busy people, especially during the beginning of the semester, and then it tapers off."

ODDL also has an assistant director who is a financial expert responsible for working through cost models and all the planning and scheduling of resources for any department that comes to ODDL seeking to develop a full online program. "In Florida we are prohibited by law from making money on any programs," Dennis said. "We can only break even. We come up with a three-year projection of what it is going to cost, and we base our fees on that."

ODDL also provides pre-admission student support (http://online.fsu.edu/student/) to all its online students, currently numbering more than 1,400. Fully online degree programs were first offered in 1999, and FSU’s graduate-level online student population has grown from 250 in ’99 to 867 today. A pre-admission student support group is comprised of three full-timers and about four part-time students who help prospective students apply and get enrolled in FSU’s online degree programs.

Another group within ODDL is the assessment services group that supports all of the computer-based testing on campus, processes course evaluations and grades, and manages proctored testing for online students.*

ODDL also manages FSU’s sophisticated online mentoring program. Mentors are educated individuals who act as learning coaches in online courses by monitoring student progress, maintaining a caring presence for the student, and helping with administrative and content issues in the course. Candidates must have a master’s degree or higher in a field related to the course of study, and they are trained by staff from ODDL’s instructional development service group. As noted on the ODDL Web site, "the mentor role has been created to support the progress of distance students and to help them feel that they are connected to a learning community. In particular, the mentor helps students develop and participate in a student-centric learning community by facilitating contact with one another through collaborative activities and by encouraging peer critiques and study groups." Dennis said that FSU online programs have "a very high success rate for getting students through their classes, and, at the undergraduate level, a lot of that is because of the mentoring program."

Editor’s Note: This article did not cover all the numerous services, information and resources available at http://online.fsu.edu/. It should also be noted that the entire online.fsu.edu site is currently under redesign. We saw an impressive preliminary site map that prognosticates an exciting new Web site in the works.