This document provides an overview of Fortis College's policies, procedures, and initiatives for their online programs. It discusses the 4-week training course for instructors called NFT101 and the asynchronous and synchronous requirements. It outlines the purpose of the weekly presentations which cover topics like student orientation, course announcements, live faculty support, the role of Program Associate Deans in student support, and the instructor handbook. It provides details on these topics, including the requirements for student orientation, the types of announcements and support instructors should provide, how to interact in discussion boards, and the new instructor onboarding process. The goal is to expose new instructors to Fortis College's online policies, procedures, and initiatives.

1. Fortis College
Policies, Procedures and Initiatives
Week Three: Course & Program Scaffolding

2. Welcome to NFT101!
This training course runs for 4
weeks, and includes both
asynchronous and synchronous
requirements. All assessments
must be successfully completed to
receive credit and be assigned a
course. If you have any issues
accessing the course, please
contact your instructor.

3. Purpose
Fortis College Student Support
These Presentations are intended to expose you to online policies, procedures and
initiatives specific to Fortis College Online, where our weekly live sessions will focus
more on the role of the instructor. The review of these PPTs and completion of the
weekly quizzes are required for ALL FOUR WEEKS in order to be assigned a course.
As you go through these presentations, please be sure to read through the comment
boxes as they will contain explanations for the information found on the slides.
Week Three Presentation Topics:
 Student Orientation
 Course Announcements
 Live Faculty Support
 PAD’s Role in Student Support
 Instructor Handbook & Addendum
 Discussion Board Interactions & Guidelines

4. 4
Student Orientation

5. Student Orientation
• Prior to being enrolled in their first courses, students must successfully
complete a Student Orientation session, which provides them with an
overview of Blackboard, course and platform navigation, support
services offered, tools/resources, online library (LIRN) information, and
hands-on activities.
• Students who do not successfully complete Student Orientation are not
enrolled for the following term. Instead, these students must wait to be
enrolled in the next group of orientation sessions, or seek enrollment
elsewhere.

6. To Successfully Complete Orientation…
• Students must do ALL of the following:
– Submit a sample discussion board post
– Upload a sample assignment (in Word format)
– Submit a sample quiz
– Complete a Student Orientation ‘Wrap-Up’ Survey
– This is in addition to reviewing the Orientation
Welcome (Articulate Storyline = interactive lesson
content) & all of the Course Tour presentations.

7. Articulate Storyline
Lesson content is primarily delivered using
Storyline. This software allows for interactive
elements not possible in Powerpoint or PDFs.

8. Sample Discussion Post

9. Sample Assignment

10. Sample Quiz Instructions

11. 11
Course Announcements

12. Course Announcements
• Instructors should always add the following announcements to each
course facilitated:
• Instructor Welcome – This is a brief announcement welcoming students to the
course.
• Live Faculty Support Hours – This the minimum 30 minute synchronous
session, held in either Blackboard Instant Messenger or Collaborate, all faculty
are required to hold each week to field questions, provide supplementary
instruction, etc.
• Policy Reminders – Please be sure to remind students of the school’s late
work/attendance policy.
• Weekly Announcements – Faculty are also required to post new
announcements each week no later than Monday at 11:59pm Pacific. These
announcements may include additional resources, encouragement, industry
updates, reminders for important course items, etc.

13. Instructor Welcome
• Not a rigid template with specific requirements, but
MUST include a screencast. You can create a free
account at www.screencastomatic.com and use your
webcam to create your own introductory screencast.
• However, these generally include…
– Instructor bio: interests/hobbies; professional experience;
teaching experience (screencast)
– Course specific tips regarding materials/content
– Reminder re: instructor contact information
– Motivation/practical ties between course and profession

14. Sample Instructor Welcome

15. Sample Instructor Welcome (cont.)

16. Weekly Announcements
• In addition to the Instructor Welcome & Live
Faculty Support announcements, which are
added to the course prior to the beginning of the
term, Fortis faculty are also required to post
weekly announcements every week of the course
no later than Monday at 11:59pm Pacific.
• These weekly announcements could include
supplemental instruction, tips regarding
assessments, topical information regarding the
field, motivation/encouragement, etc.

17. 17
Live Faculty Support (aka LFS)

18. Live Faculty Support (LFS)
• Live Faculty Support is a 30 minute (minimum)
synchronous session conducted with students every
week of a course.
• Most 6 week Fortis Online courses include Live
Instructor Sessions in weeks 1, 3, & 5 of the course.
Some of these sessions may involve a particular topic,
while others are more open/instructor driven.
• Days/times each week are at the discretion of the
instructor, within reason (2am Eastern would not be
allowable, for instance).

19. Live Faculty Support Tools/Methods
• The primary tools used to deliver LFS will be
Blackboard Instant Messenger & Blackboard
Collaborate.
• However, three times per Fortis College (6
week) term or Hybrid (12 week) term,
instructors MUST use the Blackboard
Collaborate tool to deliver LFS.
• We will discuss both these tools in our LIVE
session this week!

20. LFS Sample Content
• Supplementary Instruction to further
understanding of a course objective/s.
• Tips for tackling assignment/lab for that
particular week.
• Review of course content to that point in the
term (mid-term or final exam prep for those
courses with mid-terms/finals).
• Addressing questions previously solicited from
students via discussion board post/email.

21. 21
PAD’s Role in Student Support

22. PAD’s Role
• Your Program Associate Dean should be your primary
contact when you require assistance in managing your
courses/students.
• In addition, the Program Associate Deans for the fully
online (non-hybrid)programs provide the following
services to students:
– Academic Advising/Development of Success Plans
– Discipline/career field-specific questions
– Escalated support if student mentions other departments
have been unable to assist
– Student Withdrawal Requests
– Student Requests for Leaves of Absence (LOAs)

23. PADs should ALWAYS be notified when there is a…
• Academic
Integrity/Plagiarism Issue
• Examples:
– Pulling content from other
sources without citing.
– Copying another student’s
discussion post.
– Submitting another
student’s assignment.
– Blatant copy/paste from
paper mill or other online
repository.
• Student Code of Conduct
Issue
• Examples:
– Inappropriate language in
Discussion Board posts.
– Threats of self-harm/harm
to others in Discussion
Board posts.
– Inappropriate emails to
instructor/other students.

24. Academic Integrity/Plagiarism Policy

25. Student Code of Conduct (CoC) Policy

26. 26
Instructor Handbook & Addendum

27. Instructor Attendance Requirement
• When a faculty member “attends” their class a minimum of
five (5) out of seven (7) days each week, positive classroom
results are generated.
• Faculty are to be present in class a minimum of five (5) days
each week.
• Attending class means logging in to review assignments,
grading student work, and actively posting and participating
in the discussion forums.
• Faculty must respond to ANY student outreach, whether it
be via email, by phone, or in a Discussion Post, within 24-36
hours.

28. Faculty Teaching Loads
• Max. class size for fully online students = 30; hybrid = 25
• Distance education instructor course loads per module or term are
calculated by student credit hours per course. Instructors maintain
reasonable student credit hours each module or term to ensure
that each faculty member can conduct classes that are most
conducive to student learning.
• To calculate student credit hours by course, refer to the following
formulas:
– credit value of course multiplied by the number of students within the
course
– for example - 5 credit course x 24 students = 120 student credit hours
– three courses of 120 student credit hours = 360 student credit hours

29. Instructor Text Copy Requests
• Instructors are required to request their own ‘desk
copies’ of the texts used in their courses.
• Prior to teaching your first course (or teaching a new
course), please contact your Program Associate Dean
to request the text & publisher information.
• All of our texts should be available via online request.
• All of our courses include an electronic copy of at
least the first week’s reading material.

30. Grading & Rubrics
• The grading scale in the School Catalog and Faculty
Handbook is the only scale permitted to use for recording
student’s progress. Grading is based on performance in
class discussions, assignments, projects, and quizzes.
• For consistency purposes and helping to provide the best
student experience possible instructors are to use the
provided rubrics to grade all student work including
discussion posts and assignments. The intention is to
ensure that, after students receive feedback from their
instructors, they are able to understand why they did (or
did not) lose points on an assignment, and clearly
comprehend areas with which they may improve going
forward.

31. Weekly Report Requirements
• Each week, faculty complete a weekly progress report
documenting students who are not meeting class
attendance requirements.
• Faculty are required to reach out via phone, email & and/or
text to any students not maintaining a 70% or higher grade
average in their courses (78% or higher for hybrid).
• The results of this outreach are then documented on the
weekly student report submitted via our faculty portal.
• The Activity to use for the purpose of documenting student
notes for the weekly report is the following: * “AD-OL-
WEEKLY REPORT”

32. Academic Warning Report
(Fully Online Only!)
• No later than the beginning of Week 2, instructors will
receive a list of the students on Academic Warning in
their courses.
• In addition to the Weekly Report requirements, which
apply to ALL students, faculty are required to reach out
to all Academic Warning students in their courses
during Weeks 3 & 5, regardless of academic
performance.
• Like the Weekly Report, this outreach should occur via
phone, email, and/or text, and should then be
documented via the faculty portal (Activity = ‘AD – OL –
Academic Warning Report’)

33. 33
Discussion Board Interactions & Guidelines

34. Overview
• Each week, students are required to participate in
course discussions.
• These course discussions are the primary
opportunity to peer interaction in our distance
education programs.
• We look to our faculty to facilitate these weekly
discussions, via a series of threads and responses
to student threads each week.

35. Faculty Discussion Post Requirements

36. Step 1 (New Thread)

37. Step 2 (New Thread)

38. Step 3 (New Thread)

39. Step 4 (Reply to existing thread)

40. Steps 5 (reply) & 6 (thread)

41. Step 7 (Reply or thread)

42. How To Access Multimedia Tools

43. Instructional Immediacy Strategies
 Introduce yourself to your students in a unique
fashion
 Channels of personalization
 Use technology to appeal to multiple modalities of
learning
 Charts/Visualizations
 Video content
 Create a sense of direct instruction to achieve collective
ownership in the course
 Solicit feedback from your students during class

44. Appeal to Different Modalities of
Learning
 Use of graphics
 Microsoft Snipping Tool
 Jing
 Video
 Screencastomatic (user-created)
 http://screencast-o-
matic.com/watch/clXvD2VedY
 TedEd (curated)
 Youtube EDU (curated)
 Annotated feedback
 Crocodoc (Blackboard Assignments)

45. Examples of Immediacy
 Engaging in humor
 Asking questions
 Addressing students by name
 Encouragement of discussion
 Following up on student-initiated comments
 Encouraging student expression of opinions
 Sharing of personal examples

46. Discussion Board Example

47. New Instructor Roadmap
Items to Complete: Primary Contact:
 HR Employment Paperwork
(Florida CIE; DPOS; Ohio;
IRS; etc.)
Program Associate Dean
 Faculty Personnel File
Paperwork (Development
Plan; Employment
Verification; Resume; etc.)
Program Associate Dean
 Official Transcripts ordered
w/ Fortis as mail recipient
Program Associate Dean
 NFT101 Training Course NFT101 Instructor
 Initial Course Set-Up
(Announcement; Course
Review; etc.)

48. Please be sure that the following
hiring paperwork is in the
completion process:
 Colorado Form
 CIE Form
 Ohio Form
 I-9 Form with copies of ID
 Unofficial Transcripts( Official
transcripts are ordered)
All paperwork must be completed
and submitted no later than the end
of the 4th week of NFT101 to be
assigned a course. Please direct any
questions to your hiring Program
Associate Dean.