ION accomplishes its goals through the following services:

The Making the Virtual Classroom a Reality Program
The Making the Virtual Classroom a Reality (MVCR) program is a series of online courses for faculty, staff, and administrators aimed at developing an understanding of online pedagogies and technologies. Participants can earn the Master Online Teacher Certificate program after completing 6 online courses. Courses can be taken for academic graduate credit or CEU credit. Learn more…

Faculty Summer Institute
The Faculty Summer Institute (FSI) is an annual three-day conference on learning technologies for faculty, staff, and administrators. The program includes hands-on laboratory sessions in computer classrooms, discussion sessions and presentations on a wide variety of topics, round table discussions, electronic poster sessions, and social activities to allow participants to get to know and learn from one another. Learn more…

Faculty Trainer Institute
The Faculty Trainer Institute (FTI) is a one-day meeting for faculty and staff who are responsible for providing faculty training at higher education institutions. The goal of the meeting is to provide trainers the opportunity to learn about and share best practices in faculty development on their campuses. The program includes sessions on competencies, training strategies, and new technologies. Learn more…

On-site campus visits
ION staff visit member institutions in the state of Illinois throughout the year. Lecture-discussion presentations include topics such as instructional design for online course design, making the shift to Web-based teaching, and copyright issues. ION staff also visit with small groups of faculty to discuss online course creation issues related to a specific academic discipline. In some cases, ION staff provides the primary support for course management systems, web conferencing applications, and other educational software. Learn more…

Award-winning Web site
ION staff maintains a resource-rich Web site containing many educational resources including articles, tutorials, and presentations about online teaching and learning. ION also publishes Case Studies in Online Education and a Technology Tip of the Month. AskION provides a wealth of expert knowledge to our visitors.

Ongoing Research Projects
ION performs numerous surveys into online education. In addition to our various program evaluation surveys, we are presently conducting research into the practical effects of online education. Learn more...

Cost of ION Services
ION services are free to all faculty, staff, and administration at founding partners. Our services are also available to other Illinois partners at an institutional rate. All other individuals pay a per registration fee in MVCR courses. Contact ION for pricing on other services outside of Illinois. We have partners throughout the world.