"Emphasis in Long Term Care:" Processes of Aging End-of-Life Care Leading and Managing in Long Term Care University of Maryland Lessons Learned/Advice To Schools Develop a team that meets on a consistent basis, to include content experts, instructional designer and media support. During the development phase, be open to new ideas, so that you can make content come alive for the students. The team meetings of content experts, instructional designer and media staff will facilitate this creative process. Establish a stable/reliable technology infrastructure. The instructional designer must remain constant to the project. This individual must be able to acclimate quickly, and to cultivate solid relationships with faculty. You must have full administrative support. You must have full support for curriculum development from the chair of the department and your curriculum committee. The school must support the notion that caring for older adults is a valuable specialty, and must have at least one faculty with gerontological nursing expertise. It's beneficial for your school to be a recognized leader and to already have long-standing faculty buy-in, as is the case for the University of Maryland. You must first allow yourself an entire semester's time frame to develop the course, and then plan to offer it the following semester. Do not attempt to both develop and implement in a one-semester time period. You must factor into your work load the significant time commitment necessary to both develop and implement course. Mentoring of additional faculty during the development phase is vital to sustaining these web course offerings. They must be available to step in, when your responsibilities take you elsewhere. Mentoring new faculty to your web based course becomes easier after the course is developed and implemented, as long as mentee is an expert in the content area. Creating a committee of faculty and technical staff who are involved in web-based course development, is a perfect forum for anticipating/solving problems before they surface and/or increase. Prepare for a huge amount of technical maintenance, i.e. updates each semester, or repair of inoperable links.   Project Main Page | Grant Innovations Page | AACN Home Copyright © 2004 by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. All rights reserved.