While most Metro professors are taking a well-earned break from teaching classes this week, 40 temporary faculty members are engaging in classwork from the other end: as students.

During Spring Break, Metro is offering temporary faculty a course in how best to conduct online instruction. Currently 18 percent of Metro students are taking classes online, and this number promises to grow.

"This is a good professional development opportunity for faculty to help them better understand the online environment," says Joan Foster, interim vice president of Academic Affairs.

The course is open to temporary full-and part-time faculty, including lecturers, who want to prepare for the delivery of online instruction. It is designed to provide the basic skill and knowledge needed to use Metro's online course management system, incorporate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) section 508 requirements into classes, prevent plagiarism and become familiar with the Academic Affairs and Information Technology policies at Metro.

Two sessions are being offered, one on March 21-23 and the second on March 24-26. Each session was pre-enrolled to its maximum capacity of 20 faculty members, each of whom was nominated by his or her department chair. Faculty who attend the entire session will be compensated $540.

The course provides 18 hours of classes in WebCT, DreamWeaver, Photoshop, Egrading and related online course development programs.

"It's another step forward in online instruction at Metro," says Foster. "The benefits (of online education) to the students are obvious: it enables them to be more flexible and it's more accessible, but we need to design the classes so that they provide the same content and rigor as the congregating classes."