ONLINE CAREER TRAINING – OVERVIEW

Our mission is to train our students to become professionals prepared to meet the demands of our ever-evolving work environment.

  1. DELIVERY OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

The Online Career Training (OCT) setting constitutes the core of Emerging Technologies Institute’s system of distance learning. It offers individuals the opportunity to acquire and improve their skills and knowledge at a pace convenient to their current lifestyles and commitments. It is also our environment of choice for individuals seeking to pursue a career through the Ticket-to-Work program.

There is no denying that the popularity of distance education is on the rise. Distance education has spread from colleges to earlier grades. According to the Associated Press, the first federal study of distance education shows that students in more than one-third of U.S. school districts take courses over the Internet or through videoconferences.  At the college level, enrollment in distance-education courses nearly doubled from 1995 to 2001, as more than half of the nation's two-year and four-year colleges offer the courses.  [Augusta Free Press, VA - Apr 5, 2005]

At ETI, to ensure fairness, objectives and outcomes required from students will remain identical whether a course or curriculum is offered online or in the classroom. Quizzes and exams will have the same level of difficulty regardless of the method of instruction. Furthermore, the grading policy will not be altered.

ETI’s method of delivery of distance learning is designed to reflect the needs of students. It is a teacher supported on demand learning environment where students are given a reasonable amount of time to complete a course. Each course provides students with a method of posting questions. These questions are regularly monitored by our designated teachers providing a timely response to all our participants concerns. Students are also able to communicate with the faculty via e-mail.

Our live online learning program is available for our most popular subjects. It offers our students the ability to login from any location at a prescribed time.  They can interact with the instructor and all other students in real time through the use of an electronic board (liveboard).

No resident training will be necessary.  Students are able to view on their PC screen and ask questions on hands on exercises that are being performed. Pictures, animations and videos are also made available depending on the topic or the delivery method.

  1. STUDENT-FACULTY INTERACTION

To facilitate an active interaction between students and faculty, ETI has established several avenues:

Ø      CIL students will be able to communicate with the faculty via an integrated electronic board. A predefined time will be published to ensure students are informed as to when their instructor will be online to answer their questions.

Ø      All students will have the option of delayed communication by sending their questions via email to their instructor or submitting them directly on the bulletin board. Students will receive a response from their instructor within 48 hours.

  1. FACULTY INVOLVEMENT AND SUPPORT

ETI’s Distance Learning Team consists of an instructional designer, faculty, advisor and technologist. All members of the team are skillful or seasoned professionals proficient within specific areas of Education or technology. The team is lead by the instructional designer who reviews all the instructional materials with the assistance of the faculty.

Instructional Designer/Authorship: Lyonel Coriolan – Mr. Coriolan comes with over 15 years of experience in the Engineering Management and Computer fields. He holds a double degree in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics and Statistics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

The faculty will play an important role in reviewing the content and providing support to the program offered through distance education. They will oversee the instruction, evaluation and grading requirements of the distance education training. The instructor-student ratio is 1/20. Faculty is licensed by NYSED/BPSS. The instructors are trained by the technologist in the technology used in distance learning.

The technologist will review and study the relevant technologies to be used in the program and will provide the technical support. He/She will be responsible for providing training to other distance learning team members.

Technologist: Jean-Daniel Romain – Mr. Romain is experienced in data migration, database design and implementation, software design and digital imagery.

The role of the advisor is to provide the resources and support needed to ensure the success of this functional team.

Advisor: Frantz Jerome – Mr. Jerome comes with over 25 years of experience in education. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications Arts and Sciences from Queens College of the City University of New York, and a Master’s Degree in Mathematics Education from Long Island University.

  1. ADMISSIONS STANDARDS AND STUDENT RECRUITMENT

The admission standards for the distance learning will be the same as the classroom training. Prospective students must have a High School Diploma, GED or higher in order to enroll for courses at ETI. Students with a High School Diploma or equivalency are eligible to enroll in our basic programs. Other curriculums or individual courses may be selected provided that the student has the prerequisites as specified in the approved curriculum.

Students will complete a secure online registration form. Upon review and acceptance, each student will be mailed or e-mailed an enrollment package from the recruiter, which includes enrollment agreement and a current revision of the school’s catalogue. The enrollment agreement will conform to the provisions of the Education Law and Commissioner’s Regulations. The catalogue will highlight support services, financial aid resources, and payment and refund policies.

Advertising and recruitment materials will fully conform to the provisions of the Education Law and Commissioner’s Regulations. The school’s address appears in catalogs, enrollment agreement and the school’s website. The web site link: www.etinstitute.com is available at the BPSS web site.

  1. STUDENT EVALUATION

Assessment and documentation of each student achievement at ETI will be performed upon completion of each course and at the completion of the program. Students will be evaluated following the tests specifically designed and included in each approved curriculum. These tests will adequately measure mastery of stated learning objectives.

For our online programs, the evaluation is built into each the online environment. Upon completion of each module, students are required to pass the built-in test. The instructor, as per established grading policies, would promptly grade this test and inform students of the results. If a student fails the tests, he/she will be required to retake the test. If the student fails a second time, he or she will be required to retake the module before retaking the test. If the student passes the test, he/she will be allowed to proceed with the course. A student will not be allowed to retake a test more than 3 times. In this case, the student fails the course.

In order to adequately authenticate the identity of the student taking the test, ETI will provide a questionnaire to be completed prior to starting the test. This process will require the knowledge of personal information that was collected at registration.

  1. SUPPORT SERVICES/resources

Students will have access to the following student services to support their learning:

Ø      All students will be able to gain access to workshops that are designed to specifically guide them in their studies. Schedules will be posted online specifying time of live interaction between students and teachers. All participants will be able to relate to other students through email or through a bulletin board system either live or by reviewing their posting.

Ø      All students will have the option of delayed communication by sending their questions via email to their instructor. Students will receive a response from their instructor within 48 hours.

Ø      Relevant inquiries from students are always welcomed and addressed in timely and professional manners. If the instructor cannot address an inquiry promptly and satisfactorily, the student will have access to the Advisor and subsequently to the Director, via email and/or by telephone. Counseling and guidance will be available through the Advisement office upon request by student and/or initiated by ETI based on a student evaluation results.

  1. STUDENTS AND STUDENTS’ SERVICES

At ETI, we will ensure that the entire student body gets easy access to our services. Our comprehensive online training internet presence guides our students at every step of their learning process. All means of access to our resources are properly documented and students may easily contact our staff about any problem they encounter. A feature that is omnipresent throughout our web pages lets visitors as well as students instantly contact members of our staff. Links to third party resources such as NYSED/BPSS, Microsoft, CompTIA and other services and support are accessible via the ETI website.

  1. STUDENT RECORD

In accordance with the Education Law and the Commissioner’s Regulations, students’ records are kept in a locked file cabinet as well as secure servers at ETI to ensure the privacy, safety and security of student information and student financial transactions. Personal and financial information given by the students to authenticate their identity prior to taking a test will be provided over a secure server on-line.

  1. COMMITMENT TO SUPPORT

ETI will demonstrate strong on-going support to the program both technical and financial to enable students to complete their certificate.

Our digital infrastructure was built with the specific goal of providing our current and former students with all the assistance they need to master their course of study and to apply their knowledge in the world at large.

A complete section of our distance learning environment is dedicated for the refinement of the students’ skills beyond the requirement of the course of study. Workshops were professionally designed to assist the student in improving their knowledge by exposing them to other professionals in their fields as well as providing them with training about their career requirements and assisting them in job hunting and workplace strategies.

To evaluate and improve its distance education, ETI will review periodically the student’s surveys. Specific action will be implemented if necessary to improve the quality of our system.

  1. FINANCIAL PROTECTIONS

ETI has demonstrated strong financial support to the program with a substantial initial investment. Thousands of dollars have been spent in the implementation of a server infrastructure with backup at a remote location. Sufficient resources have also been allocated in the budget to mainly compensate the ETI Distance learning team.

ETI is a financially stable corporation. Financial statements are submitted annually to the New York State Education Department to support this claim. 

  1. REFUND CALCULATIONS

An enrollment agreement will be submitted for approval for each training program provided through distance education. Refund practices will fully conform to the provisions of the Educational Law and the Commissioner’s Regulations.

  1. PROGRAM PERFORMANCE

Students will be asked to complete a voluntary survey at the end of each course. To assess the performance of our distance education program we periodically review these surveys. Feedbacks are consulted by our Instructional designer with the goal of improving our contents. Our technologist constantly tests and reviews all suggestions and complaints concerning specific areas of the technical aspects of our environment and corrects them accordingly. The number of students completing the program successfully is our main criterion for assessing the strength of our approach.  ETI will demonstrate the educational effectiveness of distance education including assessment of student learning outcomes, student retention, student and faculty satisfaction and cost effectiveness by providing internal reports as well as publications for visitors and the student body concerning each program of study.

The strong student support services established by ETI will ensure that students are encouraged to start, continue, and finish the program in which they have enrolled.