Image adapted from Mauro Pesce, creative commons 2.0

LaGuardia faculty are invited to participate in the CUNY School for Professional Studies Online Teaching Essentials (OTE) Training from July 13 – August 2, 2021.

Eligibility has now expanded to include those who taught online prior to Spring 2020, and/or took the CUNY online training before 2015.

This 3-week online session, facilitated by CUNY faculty in discipline-specific areas, is designed to help you:

• Identify widely accepted best practices for online teaching, including principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL);
• Apply instructional design principles, organizational and facilitation skills, and communication and assessment strategies;
• Become more familiar with operations and features of a Blackboard classroom from both student and instructor perspectives.
• Connect with CUNY colleagues in your discipline or related fields.

OTE is focused on designing for asynchronous learning environments, but is useful for any digital course design. It meets online, with one synchronous session (the date/time will be determined according to participants’ schedules.)

Participants will need to have basic familiarity with Blackboard. If you’re not familiar with Blackboard or a similar platform, please take the self-guided Blackboard Basics course prior to the OTE (see info below this email)*.

To apply for the training, use your CUNY log in (the same one you use for CUNYFirst, Blackboard, etc.) to fill out the July 2021 OTE interest form by Tuesday, June 22, 11:59 pm. This is a firm CUNY deadline – the form will be closed after that time. No exceptions.

Some have reported issues getting access to the form; see the how-to guide with step-by-step instructions. Most frequently it is due to not using your CUNY login.

If accepted, you will be notified about your participation by the CUNY OTE Team on Monday, June 29^th.

Those who successfully complete the OTE are eligible to receive certification and compensation of up to $500.**

If you have questions, please contact Priscilla Stadler <pstadler@lagcc.cuny.edu>, the LaGuardia campus liaison for the OTE training.

*Blackboard Basics is a self-paced course available from your Blackboard dashboard. Look for the “Technology Training” in the top navigation and click to see the link to the Basics course.

**Please note: If you took LaGuardia’s Teaching for Distance Learning last summer, you can audit the OTE – and receive a certificate upon successful completion – but cannot be compensated again, since these funds come from the same source.