What does a distance learning coordinator do?

What is a Distance Learning Coordinator?

Distance learning coordinators, also known as instructional coordinators, are educational administrators that specialize in the distance learning curricula of academic institutions.

In previous decades, distance learning coordinators used to oversee the curricula of mail-in courses and other alternative learning methods such as video taped or televised lectures. Today, distance learning is needed for the web-based curricula and online content of college and university websites.

What does a Distance Learning Coordinator do?

A distance learning coordinator specializes in distance education that includes evaluating and implementing novel teaching techniques. The day-to-day duties at community colleges and universities involve working with faculty, staff, and students in order to raise off-campus educational standards.

Online college and university courses are quickly becoming more and more popular as technology creates new opportunities for distance learning coordinators to utilize web-based strategies. As such, coordinators and instructors must be well versed in the most up-to-date technological developments, particularly developments in multimedia that provide teachers inventive teaching methods.

There are many responsibilities for distance learning coordinators, but their primary day-to-day duties involve administrative responsibilities. The distance education programs at major universities, for example, require that coordinators evaluate lecturers in order to ensure instructors are adhering to the proper curricula. Often, this involves assessing the implementation of established technology strategies such as the scope of online courses.

Distance learning coordinators may also supervise the development of multimedia learning tools such as rich media presentations that contain graphics, video, and audio. The implementation of multimedia into online education platforms is now more common as educational institutions expand the types of courses that schools offer off-campus. For example, classes in web development require much more interactive instruction than core curriculum classes such as English or history.

Coordinating the type of information that teachers can use effectively is another aspect of the job. As previously noted, certain subjects tend to require more interactive web-based instruction than others. One of the most important duties of distance education coordinators involves inventing new ways to expand the use of technology into other subjects. Online history courses, for example, can integrate raw video clips of major historic events captured on tape such as a president's State of the Union address.

Designing and developing faculty workshops gives distance learning coordinators the flexibility to educate a college staff in tandem with expanding distance learning programs. They instruct and guide instructors who may not possess an adequate level of computer literacy.

Often, the breadth of a college's budget determines the amount of technological implementation used in online coursework. Distance learning coordinators choose which financial resources to allocate to the maintenance or expansion of network infrastructure such as database servers, for example.

What is the workplace of a Distance Learning Coordinator like?

Typically, distance learning coordinators spend the vast majority of their time in an office setting. They work in academic settings, interacting directly with faculty and staff on a daily basis.

Occasionally, the job duties require traveling to different campuses within a university's system of individual colleges.