The Elearning Community

Hello, I am a qualified teacher and i have worked at a college in UAE for almost 8 years. Now i am approached by an online university (browse its site) to teach accounting at an online platform and their the management says that they will provide the necessary training which has the duration of 8 weeks, after which i would be eligible to teach at an online platform.
So my question here is that Do teachers really need a a training over this? In online universities of US, is such training given to the teachers ? If yes then please let me know any kind of info will be appreciated. Thanks.

Hi Sarkis,
welcome on board!

The short answer could be that if they need that, in order to make teachers eligible, it's just like that...
I don't know about online US universities (we are in Italy and we don't deal with Universities), what I do know is that online teaching is different from classroom teaching.
- you need to know the tools: I don't know which tools they use at UAE University, but I suppose you need to know how to upload documents, how to configure assignments, to create tests and to correct answers......that, alone, I suppose requires some time
- more important, you need to know how to adapt your materials, your methodology and your approach to online training, be it live or with recorded materials (MOOC)

I don't know if that's 8 weeks, but if the training program includes simulating real teaching it sounds reasonable to me.