Distance Education

The Office of Distance Education & Lifelong Learning (ODELL) provides leadership for UMUC's distance education mission and support in the areas of:

  • research
  • faculty development and training
  • instructional applications and multimedia
  • intellectual property
  • technology assessment
  • pedagogy and resources; and,
  • e-commerce

Six units comprise the ODELL entity:

  • The Institute for Research and Assessment in Higher Education (IRAHE)
  • The Center for Teaching, Learning and Assessment (CTLA)
  • The Center for the Virtual University (CVU)
  • The Center for Intellectual Property in the Digital Environment (CIP)
  • The Institute for Distance Education (IDE)
  • The Learning Marketplace (TLM)

    • Major projects of ODELL include:

    • Intellectual Property Seminar Series online, sponsored by the Sloan Foundation
    • Plagiarism workshops
    • Multimedia lab for faculty training and technology development
    • Media services including including instructional applications, video production, public information productions
    • Research examining withdrawals in online and F2F courses, interaction in the online class; longitudinal study of the Online MBA; outcomes assessment for distance learning
    • A multi-year project, funded by Bell Atlantic (now Verizon Corp.), on Teaching with Technology
    • 5 year study of distance education and F2F cohorts at UMUC and their learning outcomes, sponsored by the US Department of Education
    • Training and certifying UMUC faculty for online teaching and new pedagogy
    • Web Initiative in Teaching (WIT2), to support Maryland faculty in developing leadership in online teaching
    • An online bookstore, The Learning Marketplace
    • My own research on "The 'Time' Factor in Online Teaching"—how long it takes to teach online and the implications for policy and compensation