[NOTE: portions of this article come from the UNG’s DETI Homepage tab https://ungprod.sharepoint.com/sites/myUNG/departments/distance-education/Pages/default.aspx] 

This past May, Senior Lecturer Dr. Chris Kroh was awarded a Certificate of Completion following his participation in a self-paced six-part online teaching course from UNG’s Distance Education & Technology Integration (DETI) office. Chris was the first UNG faculty member to complete the online training—beating another faculty member by two days. 

DETI hosts a variety of courses for professors to better understand engagement from their students in their online courses. The goal of this course is to provide “accessible, high quality online instruction, comprehensive online student support, best practice in pedagogy, and faculty support services.” 

Reflecting on the course Chris notes. “The self-paced DETI training not only made me better acquainted with how D2L works, but also provided helpful tools for online course instruction. I am looking forward to applying what I learned from the training as I construct assignments and activities for future online courses … I encourage other UNG instructors to take advantage of the opportunity to complete these and other trainings provided by DETI. They are self-paced, with a variety of options from which to choose, and provide invaluable tools for teaching online courses.” 

 When asked about Dr. Kroh’s achievement PSIA Department Head Dr. Craig Greathouse said, “it shows his diligence and focus [and] hopefully he was able to…gain information to more effectively operate in the online classroom. The department applauds his persistence [and initiative] to continue to learn about the best and most effective ways to deliver online learning].”  

Dr. Kroh plans to complement his just-completed training with more courses provided by the Quality Matters (QM) program to improve online courses, where he will focus on his Global Issues course.   

 Congratulations to Dr. Kroh on this recognition and initiative! Thank you for making PSIA proud! 

[Authors: Gabriella Bartlett, IA’23 & Orla Fennell, IA’23] 

Editor’s note: As of press time, several of Dr. Kroh’s PSIA colleagues are currently following in his footsteps.