Distance Education Program supports creation of online learning resources

Monday, May 2, 2022

by Leah Sandall | Distance Education Coordinator | Agronomy and Horticulture

The Agronomy and Horticulture Distance Education team expanded this spring as they welcomed Luqi Li and McKinzie Sutter as Distance Education lecturers. The team is focused on supporting and expanding online education in the department.

Li is an online teacher, focused on developing online resources for both academic students and extension audiences in the plant and landscape systems workforce. Li provides support for online extension efforts.

Sutter teaches online and is focused on developing online resources for academic learners, supporting online course and resource creation, and is the site manager for The Plant and Soil Science eLibrary (PASSeL).

Leah Sandall, Distance Education coordinator, continues to teach online while directing the growth of the online program which includes an online Master of Science in agronomy, graduate certificates, course offerings and extension resources.

The team is in the process of documenting its current online offerings and preparing to strategically grow its online program. They want to maximize the value of their existing online resources by making them easier to find and use, plus help faculty and staff know how they can contribute to the growth of the online program.

What can the team provide?

The team is here to support you! They offer:

  1. suggestions for creating a new course or expanding an existing one for online learners,
  2. connections with UNL online teaching support,
  3. conversations about an idea or challenge related to online resources,
  4. a platform (PASSeL) to house your Open Educational Resource (OER) for your class or to share with the public as a means of increasing public knowledge about plant and soil science and
  5. options for collaborating on grant proposal education or extension sections.

Contact the Distance Education team and let them know how they can help.

Online teaching and learning resources

The Center for Transformative Teaching offers a wide range of teaching support, including online teaching. A few selected resources about online teaching from CTT:

More information at agronomy.unl.edu/online.

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Accessing technology everywhere, even in the field.
Accessing technology everywhere, even in the field.