WWW-based rapid prototyping as a strategy for training university faculty to teach WWW-based courses

At the Faculty of Educational Science and Technology of the University of Twente a major initiative is taking place. This initiative involves the re-design of our courses for more-flexible delivery, in particular to prepare for the simultaneous participation in our courses of three different groups of students: regular students attending locally, full-time students attending at a satellite campus on the other side of the country, and part-time students who work during the day and will participate in the majority of the course activities at times convenient to themselves and without having to leave their homes and workplaces. The key to this re-design process is our use of the WWW, not only to support the new form of courses but also to support the training of our own faculty to prepare for this new way of teaching. Staff development and engagement is our central challenge. In this chapter, I describe the approach we use to train and engage our own faculty in the re-design of their teaching for WWW-based delivery, and the way that different WWW-based tools are a major component of this approach. We call the approach "WWW-based rapid prototyping as a training strategy".