Why should you take the OLC Advanced Certificate program?

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Teaching Certificate

Why should you take the OLC Advanced Certificate program?

To start, let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Arifa Garman. I graduated from the University of West Florida with a doctorate degree in Instructional technology, specializing in Distance Education. I have been teaching online for many years. I also worked as an instructional designer for a while and one of my duties at my current job is helping to train faculty who teach online and Face-to-Face.

Why do I say this? Not because I am applying for a job somewhere.

I took the Advanced Certificate the first time it was offered-April 2014. The facilitator who taught it was “Dr. Laurie G. Hillstock”. She was absolutely fabulous. If you have a chance to learn from her take that chance immediately.

But what also made the course so helpful is that all the participants have had a good deal of online experience (including myself) and the learning and collaboration that took place was more than I had experienced in other classes. This is why I mentioned my background and previous training. The certificate offered me the chance to learn from the experienced colleagues who offered suggestions and collaborated with me to come up with possible answers or with other possibilities to engage my students, to add multimedia to my courses, to improve my course design and to simply make me a better online instructor.

Detailed feedback we received from Dr. Hillstock also allowed each one of us to leave the course with way more than the basic of online learning and teaching. She always added suggestion and ideas that helped you think “why not add this?” or “let me try this”.

I know for the next year, while I have access to the course, I will be going back to read the feedback I received and the resources others found to expand and enrich my classes.

I am very happy with the learning experience I gained through the Advanced Certificate.

Dr. Arifa Garmn

Dr. Arifa Garman

Dr. Arifa Garman, born in the Middle East, educated in Canada and United States, is now the Director of E-Learning at Gulf Coast State College, Florida. Her graduate degrees range in topics from multicultural education, to educational leadership and policy studies and finally her doctorate is in instructional technology specializing in distance education. Her responsibilities range from faculty professional development to (full and part-time faculty) to creating solutions to existing challenges and anticipating and meeting the needs of faculty and maintaining and growing the online programs at the College.  On a creative side, Dr. Garman is an artist, specializing in Islamic Art on porcelain and a fashion designer graduated from a Canadian College.

To contact her email, dr.arifa.garman@gmail.com

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