Distance education is an integral and congruent component with of the PUPR’s mission. Thus, in addition to on campus courses, Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico (PUPR) offers fully online and hybrid courses, both at the graduate and the undergraduate levels. The latter delivery formats open a new door to college educational opportunities to students with time and distance constraints imposed by job and family obligations, among other constraints.
Virtual Education and Innovative Learning Center (VEIL)
VEIL is responsible for the management, design, and development of projects arising from the academic offering using distance education as its teaching methodology, in all three PUPR campuses. The institution provides through its Virtual Education and Innovative Learning Center, an ongoing program of orientation, training and technical support services for students taking online/hybrid courses and faculty teaching distance courses.
VEIL supports online academic programs through its human and technological resources. The Center has specialists in the use and management of the Blackboard platform, Instructional Systems Design, Graphic Design, Multimedia Integration, and Instructional Technology. The Center works as a production site of course development where sound instructional design principles are used along with Quality Matters™ Standards resulting in courses that meet distance education programs excellence Standards.
The online/hybrid courses provide interaction between faculty and learners and among learners through activities that encourage critical thinking and problem solving, as defined in the course objectives. The interaction between learners and the instructor and between learners takes place through diverse media; feedback to students is constructive and timely. The learning modules incorporate multimedia teaching technology to create images with the content, audio, video or capsules with educational content expert, computer graphics and interactivity tools.
The institution’s Learning Management System (Blackboard) is used to organize an online learning environment that provides the means to track users, assess performance, deploy content, and access general administrative functions such as management of user’s records and enable the creation of learning content; use of interactive features such as threaded discussions, and discussion forums.
Student support services include training on how to use Blackboard to successfully complete an online/hybrid course. Prior to enrolling in an online/hybrid course, students must attend one of the Blackboard Students Workshop offered by VEIL multiple times every academic term. Additional training and technical support is provided to students regarding academic integrity tools and any other technical aspect associated with successfully participating in institutional online/hybrid courses available through Blackboard. The institution continually improves software and hardware to support greater access and uptime, including portal and servers reliability.
Every student who wants to register for online courses is required to possess basic knowledge for the use of programs such as word processors, presentation creation, and e-mail management. Also, the student must have skills in searching for information from webpages with a navigator or browser.
It is also the student’s responsibility to verify the minimum systems requirements to access course information residing in Blackboard, read the Policy to Support the Academic Integrity of Online Course and install the tools needed to verify and ascertain the identity of the student enrolled in the online/hybrid course (Respondus™Lockdown Browser), among others.
Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico seeks to foster a spirit of honesty and integrity. Any work submitted by a student must represent an original work produced by that student. Consequently, to maintain the academic integrity in distance learning courses, the University has developed a Policy and Procedure to Support the Academic Integrity of Online Courses. The Policy and Procedures seek to verify and ascertain the identity of a student enrolled in an online/hybrid course, as well as monitoring performance of students who take remote exams, as required by the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008.
The State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA) is an agreement among member states, districts and territories that establishes comparable national standards for interstate offering of postsecondary distance education courses and programs. It is intended to make it easier for students to take online courses offered by postsecondary institutions based in another state. PUPR has been approved by Puerto Rico Council of Education (CEPR in Spanish) to participate in the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements.
E-mail: jarroyo@pupr.edu
Phone: (787) 622-8000 ext. 243
E-mail: scastellanos@pupr.edu
Phone: (787) 622-8000 ext. 222
E-mail: hsanabria@pupr.edu
Phone: (787) 622-8000 ext. 389
E-mail: jupagan@pupr.edu
Phone: (787)622-8000 ext. 242