The Graduate Diploma in Education Technology (GDipEdTech) was developed at the UNITEC Institute of Technology (New Zealand) in 1993 as an open and distance program to meet the needs of teachers in the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors. The program aims to integrate the use of new and emerging technologies into their classroom programs. It has gone through a number of developments in order to keep pace with changing technologies. From being a largely print-based program, augmented by First Class communication software, it has moved to one that has been fully operational online since 1997. It was first developed using HTML. At the end of 1999 the program was transferred into a commercial online course shell, Blackboard. This development has meant a challenge for the program leader and lecturers to present a program that takes account of contemporary learning theories, adapting them to an online learning environment. They must keep abreast of parallel developments in both World Wide Web-based technologies and online teaching techniques. (Contains 14 references.) (Author/MES)