The Special Educator’s Guide to Distance Education

Belva C. Collins, Ed.D., served as a professor and chair in the Department of Special Education and Child Development at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and in the Department of Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education at the University of Kentucky. She now holds the title of Professor Emeritus at both institutions. Dr. Collins began her career as a teacher of students with intellectual disability in rural Southwestern Virginia before coming to the University of Kentucky to work as a research assistant on several federally funded grants to validate the use of response prompting strategies in special education. She continued this line of research throughout her career in higher education and was successful in guiding the applied research of her students in investigating variations of systematic instruction in classroom and community settings. This work provides the foundation for this text. In addition to disseminating her own scholarly writing, Dr. Collins served as the executive editor of Rural Special Education Quarterly, the primary publication of the American Council on Rural Special Education (ACRES). Recent awards include the ACRES Eagle Award for service to rural special education, the North Carolina Teacher Educator Award, and the TED-Pearson Award for excellence in teacher education. She now devotes her time to writing and presenting on the topics of systematic instruction and special education teacher leadership.

By the time they start their first job, special education teachers should be equipped with evidence- and research-based strategies to teach content and assess learning. While many of today's special education teachers have skills in using instructional and assistive technologies, few are prepared to be distance educators for students with disabilities. The need for distance education services in special education is not new, and the field of special education was one of the first to venture into offering coursework via distance education out of necessity, as many students with disabilities experience extended school absences. With legislation requiring that all students have access to a free an appropriate education, special education teachers need the skills to engage in nontraditional instruction--and especially in distance education--if the needs of all students with disabilities are to be met.