Distance Education

I began working with distance delivery of courses as an Assistant Professor of Music at Cameron University in 1999. My first course delivered at a distance was Music Appreciation and it was delivered over interactive television (ITV). This mode allowed delivery of course content to both a local class of students in Lawton, OK and a distant class of students at the Cameron University higher education center in Duncan, OK.

One of the benefits of coming to work for Fort Hays State University was the opportunity to develop online courses for distance delivery for my discipline. The first course I developed with university assistance was Listening to Music, a general education distribution course that continues to be offered to this day. Over the years of working in the Department of Music, I also developed an online version of Instrumental and Choral Arranging for music majors and a Music Theory Review course for students in the Bachelor of General Studies program.

In addition to developing these courses for offering to US adult learners, the Listening to Music course was also modified for delivery to cross borders students based in China as a CD-ROM course with oversight by a cooperating teacher.

Ad graduate dean, I worked with deans and department chairs to encourage graduate programs to develop programs for distance delivery to an adult graduate student market. Examples include: Master of Liberal Studies, Education Specialist (Education Leadership), Master of Professional Studies, Master of Science in Psychology, MBA, and Doctor of Nursing Practice). Several programs were launched in the period of 2007-2015 which led to significant enrollment increases for the university at the graduate level.

I have familiarity with policies, federal guidelines, and institutional processes associated with distance education in the United States. At the present time, I am working with our campus shared governance structures to implement systems and processes for portfolio-based Credit for Prior Learning.