Saint Mary's College of California has launched a Digital Driver's License (DDL) program aimed at ensuring quality of hybrid and online courses.

The institution's School of Economics and Business Administration (SEBA) is spearheading the initiative, which is designed to help "professors navigate what the college explains are the challenges of teaching online courses, as well as ensure all faculty in the school's hybrid online programs are certified as 'digitally proficient' teachers for today's virtual classroom," eCampus News reported.

"Teaching online can be very different from teaching in the traditional classroom," said Professor Barry Eckhouse, who directs the new program, told eCampus News, said in a statement. "And this is particularly true of the kind of program we offer because it relies heavily on advanced synchronous technologies, such as voice-enabled web-conference, and few faculty [members] have experience using it for teaching. The kind of authoring we are now asking them to do, which involved rich multimedia, really does require the kind of preparation appropriate for educational certification."

The program, which will soon be mandatory for all SEBA instructors who teach in the hybrid format, will introduce SEBA's teachers to a broad range of technologically enabled teaching options. Programs will learn how to use invaluable instructional technologies like voice grading, podcasting, and screen capture.

Although SEBA has been a national leader in online education, Eckhouse was concerned that the growth of online offerings might outstrip the supply of teachers certified to teach in the new online environment. He therefore developed the DDL to insure that systematic preparation would take place before anyone would enter the hybrid classroom, either face to face or online.

"This is going to be challenging because it's critical that our faculty can keep up," Eckhouse said. "More and more, instructors in higher education are encountering the digital natives -- students who have never known a time without the Internet -- so to stay relevant and provide the best educational experience we can, it's important that we pay full attention to the media our students know and consume daily."

The program, which launched this year on Nov.1, will certify thirty-four faculty members total, from the Executive MBA Program, the MS Accounting Program, and the MS FAIM Program over the course of two years.