Arkansas Tech University has been notified by the Arkansas Department of Education that it has received grant funding to offer the ATU Online Teaching Academy for a second consecutive year.
The grant for the 2022-23 academic year will allow ATU to provide 15 hours of graduate course credit to 30 public school teachers seeking to improve their skills in delivering online curriculum.
Due to scholarship funding provided by the Arkansas Department of Education grant, program participants will have the opportunity to earn all 15 hours of graduate course credit available through the ATU Online Teaching Academy at no cost.
Dr. Theresa Cullen, professor of curriculum and instruction and head of the ATU Department of Curriculum and Instruction, serves as program director for the ATU Online Teaching Academy. Cullen is joined on the academy faculty by ATU College of Education colleagues Dr. Rebecca Callaway, professor of curriculum and instruction, and Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim, associate professor of curriculum and instruction.
“As teacher technology educators, we believe we have the responsibility to not only prepare our students for the technology needs of today’s classroom but also prepare and inspire them for the adjacent possible,” wrote the ATU Online Teaching Academy faculty in its program proposal. “The ATU Online Teaching Academy is therefore predicated on the idea of the adjacent possible. In addition to traditional communication modes, we will also be using a virtual reality environment.”
Individuals who complete the ATU Online Teaching Academy earn a certificate in online teaching. Twenty educators from the 2021-22 cohort will graduate with an online teaching certificate from Arkansas Tech and test for the online teaching endorsement from the State of Arkansas.
ATU Online Teaching Academy completers are also eligible to stack their earned hours toward the ATU Master of Education degrees in instructional technology and library media.
“Many students from the 2021-22 academy are planning on finishing their degree at Tech,” said Cullen.
Curriculum design and evaluation, advanced curriculum design for online learning, online course development, instructional technology and emerging technologies for education and training are among the topics that are covered during the ATU Online Teaching Academy.
The 2022-23 program will begin with a two-week boot camp July 11-22, during which participants will be synchronously engaged weekdays from 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. The courses in fall and spring will be asynchronous. Synchronous monthly meetings during the regular school year will provide opportunities for discussion and group learning.
Students will be provided with a virtual reality headset that will allow some classes to be held synchronously in a virtual reality setting.
“While a boot camp is an intense experience, having both a synchronous and asynchronous format allows us to demonstrate best practices in multiple modalities of online learning for our participants,” said Cullen.
Applications for the 2022-23 ATU Online Teaching Academy are open through Friday, April 15, at https://bit.ly/atuonlineacademy22.
For more information, send e-mail to tcullen@atu.edu, rcallaway@atu.edu or mibrahim1@atu.edu.
