Fall 2009 through Summer 2012, the E-Teacher Scholarship Program was funded through the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, ECA/A/L with 7 innovative, online, graduate level courses to English teaching professionals abroad through University of Oregon, Linguistics Department, American English Institute (UO AEI) and University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

Countries Represented

Courses were open to candidates worldwide. All participants were nominated through U.S. Embassies or Consulates. More than 1000 educators were nominated each year. For the 2009-10 academic year (Fall/October 2009 through Summer/September 2010), we were able to provide online scholarships for more than 500 candidates; in 2010-11 for more than 650 participants; and, for 2011-12, for more than 1000 participants, with representation over time from the following 100+ countries, listed below in alphabetical order:

Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Korea, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia (FYROM), Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Samoa, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, West Bank, Yemen and Zambia.

Course Titles and Description

Following are links to PDF files for the 7 course descriptions, listed in alphabetical order by title, as published on the E-Teacher Scholarship Program website. All course materials are delivered electronically and included in each course.

Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web, from UO AEI.
Critical Thinking in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Curriculum, from UO AEI.
English as a Foreign Language Assessment, from UMBC.
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Best Practices, from UO AEI.
Methods Course I: Survey of Best Practices in Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), from UMBC, using the Shaping the Way We Teach English materials from University of Oregon and the US Department of State, ECA/A/L.
Methods Course II: Developing EFL Literacy through Project-Based Learning, from UO AEI. Videos developed 2009-11 for this course are available through UO YouTube.
Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL), from UMBC.

Dates for Online 10-Week Courses

Actual course start/finish dates vary slightly from course-to-course, per table below, but all courses run a minimum of 10 weeks. Course length may vary slightly for UO and UMBC due to variations in holiday and orientation schedules.

Term	Courses Begin	Courses End
Fall 2011, UO:	September 26, 2011	December 02, 2011
Fall 2011, UMBC:	September 22, 2011	December 14, 2011
Winter 2012, UO:	January 09, 2012	March 16, 2012
Winter 2012, UMBC:	January 05, 2012	March 21, 2012
Spring 2012, UO:	April 09, 2012	June 15, 2012
Spring 2012, UMBC:	April 05, 2012	June 20, 2012
Summer 2012, UO:	June 25, 2012	August 31, 2012
Summer 2012 UMBC:	June 21, 2012	September 05, 2012

Course Requirements

Participants lived in time zones and locations all around the world and courses were delivered in asynchronous mode (not in real-time). Participants planned to be online on a daily basis in order to complete assignments and contribute to discussion threads. However, so long as they met weekly deadlines, they could do their online work any time and any place at their convenience.

Participants were expected to spend 8-10 hours per week in course work. Factors which can add more time to course work include slow Internet connectivity locally, a level of English language proficiency which was not adequate to handle university-level work, or other local factors related to teaching, family, etc.

E-Teacher Online Courses Offered Quarterly, Rolling Enrollment

University of Oregon (UO) and University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) offered 10-week online E-Teacher courses 4 times per year: Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. We used a rolling enrollment system and placed candidates in courses as spaces became available. All candidates were required to complete the online registration process in order to accept the scholarship and secure their places in the course.

Certificates

Participants received certificates upon completion of their course projects and other assignments with a score of 70% or higher. At the end of each 10-week session, certificates were express mailed to U.S. Embassy and Consulate sponsors for local distribution.

Policies

Policy, Forfeit of Scholarship: Participants who complete online registration and enroll in courses and then forfeit their E-Teacher scholarships may not be eligible for
future such funding.
Policy, Late Work/Incomplete Work: Late work is not accepted and "incomplete" grades are not an option. All course work must be completed within the term in
which a participant is enrolled.
Policy, Plagiarism: There is zero tolerance for plagiarized (copied) work of any kind. Participants will not receive credit toward passing the course on work which has
been plagiarized. This includes discussion postings as well. For information on acceptable quotation practices, see Quotations, Paraphrases and Summaries from
The OWL at Purdue (OWL = Online Writing Lab).

Technical Requirements

Individuals who were new to online learning were welcome. However, course participants needed to be familiar, at a minimum, with:

Email.
Web browsing (e.g. Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome).
Word processing and basic file management (creating new files, saving files, spell check, document formatting, etc.).
Adobe Acrobat Reader for PDF files [free download available].

Regular access (once a day is ideal but 4-5 times a week can work, if need be) to a computer with an Internet connection is a must.

Tip: Be sure to check your spam or junk folder if you think we have not responded to you, as some email services automatically deliver unknown mail in this way.