Distance Education at USF Sarasota-Manatee

USF Sarasota-Manatee has a variety of distance education tools to provide a wide range of course delivery options. Some classes use these tools to supplement the traditional classroom while others provide a completely asynchronous online learning experience.

Our goal is to provide web-based educational opportunities that meet or exceed the experience found in the traditional classroom setting. To facilitate these goals Distance Education develops highly qualified faculty who are professional, ethical, supportive, and who possess a sense of empathy for students in the distance learning community by providing a support framework in which faculty may increase the effectiveness of their online teaching practices and the tools used to support the learning environment. Distance education strives to enhance support and resources available to faculty and students via one-on-one consultation (phone, email and in-person), tutorials on the distance education website, scheduled training for faculty, presentations at new student orientation and new faculty orientation.

The distance education office is located in Academic Affairs, room C316. Feel free to stop by or email us and we will be happy to answer any questions.

Tools

Blackboard is the course management system is used in every USF-SM class to provide online access to course materials, grades, and a number of collaboration tools. It is the central portal where students can access the rest of the distance education tools.

Elluminate provides a virtual meeting space where instructors and student groups meet, hear each other and share documentation. It is often used with online work in a blended course to give students synchronistic meeting times to accompany their live multi-media collaboration.

Respondus is an examination plugin for Blackboard that enables professors to create, edit, and deploy exams to their Blackboard course.

Video Conferencing systems are available in multiple rooms on campus. They are capable of two-way communication between all USF campuses and other locations around the world. Each room can share a computer screen, doc cam, DVD player, or video in real time.