Learn how to make your online courses more engaging
Capturing Teachable Moments Online
The teachable moment, that fleeting opportunity when students are ready and willing to learn, is the ideal time to introduce important concepts and ideas. Sometimes the moment is inspired by a flicker of intrinsic interest in a particular topic, sometimes by an authentic and immediate need. Capturing and capitalizing on these teachable moments is at the core of any successful course, but it can be easier said than done when you’re battling the asynchronous nature of an online course.
When your students are accessing your course materials individually via a website, and studying when and where it’s convenient for them, is it still possible for you to find those teachable moments? The answer is, emphatically, yes! In this online seminar, you will learn how to identify when teachable moments happen and how to design online courses to make the most of them.
Even the most generous online course cannot provide an on-call instructor 24/7. There will be times when the course materials must stand alone–and must create and fulfill teachable moments without the benefit of interpersonal communication. According to information services expert Eric Frierson, asynchronous online environments require proactive planning and design. In other words, you need to build a smarter online course. In this seminar, Frierson brings together new and old technology to help you anticipate student questions and interests. You’ll discover techniques for creating more engaging, more instinctively responsive course sites. Capturing Teachable Moments Online will show you how to:
- “Think like a novice,” reviewing your instructions and assignments from a student perspective to pinpoint when and where teachable moments happen.
- Retrofit or create from scratch classes that anticipate student needs and proactively meet those needs, leveraging the power of the hypertext.
- Identify places students will struggle, and use creative placement of help to be as close to the teachable moment as possible.
- Pull from available, embeddable Internet sources to enrich your course materials, allowing students to go on instructor-sanctioned digressions.
- Use Web 2.0 tools to expand, engage, and answer questions.
Whether you’re retrofitting a course or building one from scratch, you will master how to implement these simple but magically effective upgrades. About the Presenter: Eric Frierson is a Reference and Instruction Librarian at the University of Texas at Arlington, and has experience as an Instructional Technology Librarian at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. Who should attend:
- Instructors who are teaching online (or considering doing so)
- Instructors apprehensive about the loss of face-to-face interaction with students
- Course and curriculum designers
- Department chairs
- Program directors
If you have any questions contact Customer Service at 800-433-0499 or (608) 246-3590 or email us at support@facultyfocus.com.
Eric Frierson currently works as Library Digital Services Manager at St. Edward's University, in Austin, Texas, after serving as an associate librarian at the University of Texas at Arlington. In addition to providing on-campus and online students with support and instruction in using library resources, he teaches a course titled “Science in the Middle-Level Grades” for seniors preparing to teach in middle-grade classrooms. He earned his master of science in information from the University of Michigan in 2006, and his BA from the University of Texas at Austin, where he double majored in computer science and English, and also received his high school teacher certification.