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Access the online Pressbooks version of this article here. This article presents information surrounding how the COVID-19 crisis can lead to opportunities for empowering growth in faculty course development and delivery. The authors show how higher education instructors have implemented remote teaching experiences they used during the pandemic to create engaging learning opportunities for students as they are returning to the higher education classroom. The article explores innovative ideas for communication and instruction, equity issues, and inclusive practices. The authors address the overall changing higher education climate and share their personal experiences transitioning from teaching in a face-to-face setting to going fully remote and back again.

This article discusses the value of developing mentoring programs for the empowerment of distance learning faculty. The paper describes various ways mentoring relationships enhance the development and teaching of distance learning courses. Distance learning faculty mentoring programs consist of a process where a more experienced faculty member assists a newer faculty member in developing a distance learning course. By creating and supporting distance learning faculty mentoring programs, higher education institutions can provide an efficient and valuable way for new distance learning faculty to gain empowerment as well as the skills and knowledge they need to teach online. This article asserts that mentoring programs for faculty interested in teaching online may help transform universities from archaic institutions reliant on paper and pencil into living entities that meet the needs of the modern learner.

Introduction: Socioeconomically marginalized people who use illicit drugs (PWUD) often engage in alternative income generating activities to meet their basic needs. These activities commonly carry a number of health and social risks, which may prompt some PWUD to consider addiction treatment to reduce their drug use or drug-related expenses. We sought to determine whether engaging in certain forms of income generation was independently associated with self-reported need for addiction treatment among a cohort of PWUD in Vancouver, Canada. Methods: Data from two prospective cohorts of PWUD in Vancouver were used in generalized estimating equations to identify factors associated with self-reported need for addiction treatment, with a focus on income generating activities. Results: Between June 2013 and May 2014, 1285 respondents participated in the study of whom 483 (34.1%) were female and 396 (30.8%) indicated that they needed addiction treatment. In final multivariate analyses, key factors significantly and positively associated with self-reported need for addiction treatment included engaging in illegal income generating activities (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.96, 95% Confidence Interval [CI}: 1.11-3.46); sex work (AOR = 1.61, 95% CI: 1.05-2.47), homelessness (AOR = 1.65, 95% CI: 1.22-2.25); and recent engagement in counselling (AOR = 1.85, 95% CI: 1.40-2.44). Discussion: Our results suggest that key markers of socioeconomic marginalization are strongly linked with a stated need for addiction treatment. These findings underscore the need to provide appropriate and accessible addiction treatment access to marginalized PWUD and to consider alternative approaches to reduce socioeconomic disadvantage.