Distance Learning Coordinator

A classroom used to be a physical place: a room filled with desks and chairs, where a Teacher stood before you — face to face — in order to lecture, narrate, and demonstrate the day’s lessons. If you couldn’t be in the classroom, you unfortunately couldn’t learn.

Today, however, classrooms are changing. So much so that in many schools and offices, they aren’t physical classrooms at all. They’re virtual ones.

As a Distance Learning Coordinator, you’re the person who’s in charge of creating, coordinating, and managing those classrooms, which are designed to electronically facilitate education so that it can be accessed any time, anywhere, and by anyone with nothing more than a computer and an Internet connection.

Distance Learning Coordinators are employed primarily by colleges and universities for the purpose of educating students, but also by trade associations, nonprofits, and private enterprises for the purpose of training workers. You’re not the person who teaches online classes. Instead, you’re the person who organizes them, which means you’re in charge of designing, developing, and deploying e-learning content and curriculums; selecting, implementing, and managing web-based learning platforms; scheduling distance learning programs; selecting and supervising distance learning staff; collecting and distributing course materials; promoting distance learning offerings; maintaining student records; and managing student enrollment.

Equally knowledgeable about education and technology, Distance Learning Coordinators are part Educator, part IT whiz. And in the context of electronic learning, that makes you the equivalent of an Academic Dean in an online school. After all, although the classroom is virtual, the students, the lessons, and the learning are all 100 percent real.