This Distance Learning Information and Support for Staff handbook is designed to help you to locate the resources available at the University of Otago to support distance course development, teaching and administration.

Course/Programme administrators are responsible for the week-to-week support and management of distance students and papers.

Using audio conferencing for teaching and student support has a well-established history at Otago.

There is a range of options for hosting audio and video files for students to access.

As a distance educator, you are more likely to provide copies of materials for your students, since your students are less likely to be able to use library facilities on-site.

The Director of Distance Learning is always prepared to discuss potential research projects with interested staff.

The Distance Learning Office runs forums for distance academic/teaching staff and for administrative distance staff throughout the year. Sometimes we hold joint forums rather than separate ones.

What happens at Otago?

eVision is the University’s Student Management System (SMS) and is supported by ITS Information Systems.

The University's Graduate Wellbeing Coach has this message for graduate distance students...Do pass this on!

The Higher Education Development Centre provides leadership in research, academic development and teaching.

Services provided and/or supported by ITS are available to all staff.

As you are no doubt aware, the University of Otago has world-class libraries to support staff and students engaged in teaching, learning and research.

Marketing Services in the Division of External Engagement has overall responsibility for how and where the University promotes itself.

Which will I use?

Online learning environments or Learning Management Systems (LMS) provide access to course materials, discussion forums, workshops, tests, surveys, simple blogs and wikis, and online assessment via the internet.

The Otago Blogs and Otago Wikis services provide something a little more powerful than the simple Blackboard wikis and blogs.

In all regions of the world there are active professional associations of distance educators. There are also many conferences on offer.

Read on to find out what's on offer in the 2024 Distance Learning Professional Development Programme through the Distance Learning Office

The Higher Education Development Centre (HEDC) offers Student Learning Development (SLD) services to support distance students at all levels of study.

Distance supervision occurs when student and /or supervisors are separated, usually geographically, for any length of time.

Across all Divisions and campuses, you will find colleagues with distance learning experience - much of it considerable!

The Distance Learning Info & Support for Students handbook - what is it?

There is a range of teaching support services available to distance teaching staff.

In this section you’ll find resources and the names of some people who will help you as you start developing your course material and/or setting up or refining course administrative procedures.

There are many web-based resources available to staff at Otago.

The University provides web conferencing services via Zoom across campuses and wherever you or your students may happen to be.

In the early days of distance education, after the hard work of course design and development, the start of a semester and the beginning of a course may have been an anti-climax.

You may be developing a paper that has never been taught at a distance before, or maybe you are re-designing or maintaining a course that has been taught previously.

Support is available from a range of areas.

There is an extensive body of literature related to theory, research, and practice in distance education.

According to Keegan (1996, p. 37), the terms “distance teaching” and “distance learning” are each only half of the process of distance education. When used in this handbook, the term “distance learning” refers to both the teaching and learning processes and is interchangeable with the term “distance education”.

The University has been active in the distance learning field since before 1986, predominantly at postgraduate level.

To convert an existing campus-taught paper to a distance paper, your Department needs to submit a proposal to your Divisional Board.

Here are some terms that you may encounter as you read about distance learning, followed by two terms ("distance" and "online") that Otago uses in a particular way.

In these times of big changes to the way we are thinking about our papers and the ways students engage with their learning, we need to establish common ways of referring to the format of our papers and programmes.