With our virtual campus, we must provide and enforce policies and procedures to ensure the technical success of our online courses. As we went through a major conversion, we discovered the need to map out the life of a course from start to finish. Although we had been going through the motions, we hadn't strongly enforced procedures and timelines. We've created a plan to communicate policies, procedures, innovations and updates to our WebCT users. Part of this strategy includes internal and external e-mail communication and periodic on-site forums for WebCT users.

At Excelsior, we have staff on-site that takes care of designing and setting up the courses for the instructors. In light of our fast-growing online programs, we have formed a plan that simplifies the course design process. This includes course templating (WebCT and Dreamweaver), utilizing style sheets throughout all online courses, and a means of using WebDav to connect directly to WebCT from Dreamweaver.

Training presents specific challenges. We have developed a customized online course to train our faculty at-a-distance on the "nuts and bolts" of the areas of WebCT that each instructor is responsible for. For on-site course designers, we offer both week-long training sessions for first-time users, as well as ongoing, specialized training for more experienced users.