I was drawn to this session because it addressed faculty supports, and I am looking for resources to help support the faculty. Alexandra Pickett, systems administrator for Open SUNY COTE, gave an overview of Open SUNY COTE. COTE is the Center for Online Teaching Excellence.

Pickett gave a presentation similar to this one.

Open SUNY COTE focuses on four significant elements:

• Research and innovation – looking for best practices
• Community of Practice – networking community to raise the level
• Competency Development – design Professional Development paths
• Course Support – OSCQR

Open SUNY Cote has six Communities of Practice:

They just added Friends of SUNY.

• Exemplar
• Experienced
• Interested
• Friends of SUNY
• Innovator/researcher
• ExpertID

Everyone is a member of Open SUNY. There are 1,101 participants across 58 campuses.

Pickett shared a number of resources used to help keep members informed to include:

• Online teaching gazette – They curate content monthly.
• COTE Summit was held in Feb 2015. Recordings are available. The next COTE Summit is scheduled for in NYC, March 2016.
• Blog -They are working on a blog.
• COTE Community – A central feed of blog posts, twitter feeds, and much more.

Pickett also spoke about their online competency development program. They are developing various professional development paths to include online pedagogy certification, online teaching certification, and instructional design certification.

Open SUNY COTE is also exploring badging. If you meet the qualifications, you can claim these badges.

In terms of course supports, Open SUNY COTE advocates for the use of the Open SUNY COTE Quality Review (OSCQR) process.

If you want to learn more about Open SUNY Center for Online Teaching Excellence, I recommend these links:

• All things COTE
• Join COTE Communities of Practice 
• Engage with COTE Community
• Subscribe to the Online Teaching Gazette 
• Learn from COTE Calendar