FSM serves over 35,000 students in their public education program with over 2,000 students receiving special education services. Special education programs and services must be delivered in a geographical area that spans an area larger than the continental United States. These hundreds of small islands typically have small populations that are often only served infrequently by ships every six to eight weeks.
The vast geography and number of small schools creates service delivery challenges not found in other entities. In many cases there will only be one teacher to serve several grades including children with disabilities. Teachers need increased skills to effectively provide instruction for the diversity of students they serve. There is a real need to build capacity within FSM to use the potential of the Internet as a means of providing current best practice content, accessing resources needed for faculty development, and to provide potential opportunities for delivery of courses via distance education at the State level.
The College of Micronesia-FSM has an established a relationship with San Diego State University, Interwork Institute (SDSU) to address the unique needs within this project.
Based on the collaborative planning, SETTI will implement an innovative "Facilitated Distance Learning Model" to respond both to the remote site State level teacher training needs and the faculty development needs. For the COM-FSM to be able to be able to deliver high quality teacher training courses within each State campus, an Internet based distance education model, that incorporates the use of COM-FSM faculty as local Distance Education Facilitators will be used.
The Facilitated Distance Learning Model represents many unique and innovative approaches that take into account the needs of teachers, the COM-FSM, and the remote geography and limited development found in the FSM. The model allows for incumbent teachers, living on remote islands who have been underserved and underrepresented by current limited course delivery capacity, to have access to high quality special education related courses.
The model will use COM-FSM special education faculty as master professors and the expertise of the SDSU Distance Education Program staff to work closely in designing and delivering courses. A core of four three-unit 300 level existing COM-FSM special education related courses are targeted. The core courses include:
