The SUNY Learning Network (SLN – 1994-2014) became Open SUNY (2014-2017) and then transitioned to SUNY Online(2018-present). This included a transition from the Open SUNY Center for Online Teaching Excellence (Open SUNY COTE)  to SUNY Online Teaching, which develops tools and resources to support the online teaching efforts and course design initiatives across the system at the campus, online instructional designer (ID), and online faculty levels.

SUNY Online Teaching innovates with award winning online faculty development, online instructional design, and online course quality tools, processes, and approaches. Our model has a foundation in theory and research-based effective practices, centers on online pedagogy, rather than on technology, assumes the instructor as course creator, and includes an assigned online instructional designer.

We innovate and develop online teaching supports and services, and are committed to continuously improving our understanding of how people can teach and learn well online.

Online courses in SUNY containing Course Information areas with a deconstructed syllabus of documents (such as Welcome, My Expectations, How you will be Evaluated, etc), a Module Overview, or a What’s Due When document, an Ask a Question area, a Talk with the Professor area, a Class Community area, or notions of culminating course activities – these courses can trace their origins back to our original SLN “templates” and the SLN online faculty development process.

We worked closely with 40+ SUNY campuses over the years, trained and developed thousands of online faculty in our centralized online faculty development program, and trained, mentored, and led hundreds of online instructional designers across the system over the years. This has resulted in a unique system-wide community of online practitioners, and has resulted in an institutionalized and professionalized role of the online instructional designer at SUNY at almost every

You can see that our strong influence lives on in online course designs, faculty development activities, materials, practices and approaches at Herkimer, Monroe, FLCC, Niagara, Clinton, Jefferson, Rockland, Ulster, Farmingdale, FIT, Plattsburgh, Sullivan, Fulton-Montgomery, UAlbany, Oswego, Broome, Nassau, Suffolk, Orange, and others.