Dear Distance Education Faculty;

Welcome to the Summer 2012 Semester! We look forward to working with you this semester to help ensure that our students have a successful distance education experience. Please accept our gratitude for your hard work and dedication to students and please understand, our role is to assist you in the instructional needs for your courses.

Please make sure that you have activated your blackboard course and posted your syllabus no later than the first day of the summer session (10-week and 1^st 5-week sessions May 21^th and 2^nd 5-week seesions June 27^nd).  If you have any problems or need assistance doing this, the IT Services Call Center will be available to walk you through the process.  They can be reached by calling 907-786-4646 Opt 1.  Their hours of operation are M-F 6am-midnight and weekends and holidays 8am-5pm.

We will be continuing our proactive approach in assisting students who may be struggling getting started with distance learning. Please check your Blackboard course daily to see which students are participating in your course. If you feel a student is struggling and you would like us to contact them please provide us with the name of the student and we will do our best to intervene.

It is critical for all students to have reliable access to their UAA email account and to their Blackboard account. If students are having log in issues to either of these accounts they need to immediately contact our IT Services Call Center at 786-4646 or callcenter@uaa.alaska.edu. Students will also find that a majority of their questions can be answered by reviewing the Distance Education Student Guide located on our website (www.uaa.alaska.edu/distanceeducation).  Further questions can also be directed to the Distance Education email at distance@uaa.alaska.edu.

If you need any additional training with Blackboard, eLive or any other instructional technology used at UAA our Faculty Technology Center (FTC) has recourses available for your assistance. If you are interested in this support, please contact the IT Services Call Center at 907-786-4646 and select option 4 for the Faculty Technology Center.

Finally, the beginning of the semester is the perfect time to make arrangements for your faculty evaluations with IDEA. You will be receiving an email shortly to adjust the weighting of your survey(s). If you would like the survey to be available to students earlier or later than the standard dates then you will need to make a request to change them. For information or questions regarding the faculty survey, please refer to the Faculty Services website. http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/facultyservices/idea-faculty-student-evaluations.cfm.  Or call the IT Services Call Center for the Faculty Evaluation Support which is 786-4646 option #6 on the menu.  You can also send an email requesting further information or assistance to ayidea@uaa.alaska.edu.

Thank you again for your support of our distance education program at UAA.

UAA Distance Education Staff