We provide multiple professional development opportunities to support your growth as an online instructor. Using a community of practice (COP) framework, we bring practitioners together across campus to share experiences, learning, and impactful practices.
Ongoing Events
Fall 2025 Professional Development Schedule
Explore Digital Learning’s asynchronous, facilitated offerings that explore the fundamentals of online course design, development, and delivery, and other rotating topics like teaching with generative AI.
ScheduleBrown Bag Fridays
The Virtual Brown Bags provide a platform for instructors to come together in a community of practice and share teaching tips, ideas, strategies, and practices relevant to online teaching in an informal setting.
Schedule & Archived SessionsOnline Learning Community of Practice
The Online Learning Community of Practice (OLCoP) offers 45-minute interactive, collaborative sessions about best practices that enhance online teaching and learning, led by Instructional Designers in Digital Learning.
Schedule
Certificate Programs and Seminars
The Online Teaching & Learning Certificate (Online TLC) is a collection of self-paced modules designed to provide asynchronous training for designing, developing, and delivering online courses. This course is currently under revision. Check back for updates on new launch date.
Digital Learning Faculty Champion Program
The Community of Practice framework shapes our professional development offerings as we aim to promote teamwork and mutual learning among UTK instructors. To advance our goal, we created the Faculty Champion for Digital Learning program. The Faculty Champion for Digital Learning plays a crucial role in helping Digital Learning create stronger bonds and confidence among UTK faculty members, matching our office’s dedication to excellence in online education.
Meet the Fall 2025 – Spring 2026 Faculty Champions
Felicia Slattery
Lecturer
Digital Learning Book Club
Connect with your peers through the passion for reading!
Started in spring 2024, the DL book club sparks thoughtful conversations about education, community and care related to digital learning. Whether you are a faculty member, staff, or graduate student, you are invited! Each semester, we select a book and discuss its chapters synchronously via Zoom and asynchronously via InScribe. Click here for the schedule.
Testimonials
“You help demystify teaching online in a friendly and supportive manner. You make it accessible and empower students to take on teaching in this new format. Thank you.”
Ivonne Vidal, PhD
“It has been a great experience taking the two training courses, both very helpful, and I look forward to completing the series next semester.”
Jiang (Lucy) Tingao, Department of Math
Schedule a Consultation
More questions? Have another idea? Contact Dr. Igor Akpovo, Manager of Online Professional Development
More questions? Have another idea? Contact:
Dr. Igor Akpovo
Assistant Director of Professional Development
