From November 6-10, the University of Georgia will be joining colleges and universities around the country to celebrate National Distance Learning Week (NDLW). Created in 2007, NDLW is an annual event geared towards generating awareness and appreciation for those involved in the online learning environment.

As National Distance Learning Week approaches, we here at the Office of Online Learning (OOL) would like to thank everyone that contributed to the growth and success of online learning at UGA. Currently, UGA offers 28 fully online programs and hundreds of individual online courses. While some students take a mixture of online and on-campus courses, many are completing their programs completely online.

The OOL is committed to increasing the number of programs and courses available for distance delivery, and to increase the summer online class offerings. The OOL has collaborated with different academic departments on campus interested in developing distance programs by determining market feasibility for new online program ideas, developing and deploying marketing campaigns, and providing instructional design assistance for program development. This year, the Online Course Innovation Grant- offered by the Office of Online Learning and the UGA Graduate School- made the development of online courses for potential graduate programs in social work and emerging media possible. The University of Georgia is taking initial steps towards developing the state’s first fully-online master’s degree in emerging media, as well as several innovative online graduate courses in social work. No other public university or college in the nation offers an online master’s degree in emerging media.

In terms of summer courses, online course enrollment has increased significantly since the Online Learning Fellows program (OLF) began in 2013. This program, targeted primarily at UGA faculty teaching online for the first time, seeks to guide these faculty members through the planning and creation of online courses. With the help of instructional designers at the OOL, faculty members create innovative online courses for the summer. Summer online course enrollments have increased from just over a 1,000 in 2013 to over 10,000 in summer 2017.

These past several years have been exceptional years for UGA Online, and we would like to thank all the students, faculty, and employees that have made this all possible.