JesuitNet, the online distance education network of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, received a federal LAAP grant ("Learning Anytime Anywhere Program") in February 2001 to develop an online course design model for online graduate-level courses at Jesuit schools. JesuitNet collaborated with CNDLS to develop the CADE (Competency-Assessment in Distance Education) course design model and to develop a faculty development process to disseminate the model within the network.

Dissemination of the model took the form of a series of online faculty development workshops that occurred between 2001 and 2003. The online, virtual workshop focused on guiding faculty in course development around student competencies rather than focusing solely on content. This pedagogically-based workshop allowed faculty to reflect on how they teach in face-to-face classrooms and how their practice and goals for student learning would translate in to an online environment.

The CADE process within the online workshop is organized around three phases of course development that identify:

1. The specific set of competencies for students to master—What do faculty want students to know, understand, or be able to do?
2. The evidence needed to indicate student mastery—How will faculty know if students have attained these competencies?
3. The instructional tasks needed to reveal the evidence—How will faculty create an instructional environment in which students interact meaningfully with the content?

Through the development of this CADE approach, CNDLS conducted research on think-alouds and cognitive apprenticeship as useful models to support faculty in thinking about what they ask students to know and how they teach students to acquire this knowledge. By spring semester of 2003, 75 professors from 26 Jesuit institutions participated in the online development workshop. JesuitNet now operates the workshop independently of CNDLS and promotes the CADE-developed online courses through the AJCU network.