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advice to online instructors
A look at proven practices for continually improving the online teaching and learning experience
Strategies to Manage High Enrollment Online Courses
As class size increases, it may not be practical to keep all assignments, discussions, exams, and other activities exactly as before, but it is not always easy to know which adjustments will provide the best results. This seminar will help you meet the demands of teaching large online courses without compromising quality or expanding faculty workload.
audio Online Seminar • Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 • 2:00 Eastern
The Underbelly of Online Teaching
No matter how much we embrace and enjoy online teaching, the human frailties of mistakes, disappointment, anger, frustration, and oversights will come calling each time we teach a class. And when any of these happen we can respond with an emotional and unchecked action—never good—or we can accept that these negatives will always be part of our online teaching efforts and learn how to deal with them in a sensible, appropriate manner. What follows are the most common of the negative issues one will find when teaching online.
Guidelines for Online Teaching Success
Years ago at a faculty meeting Larry Ragan, PhD, director of Faculty Development for Penn State’s World Campus, was trying to soft-sell the idea of performance expectations for online faculty. He didn’t want the discussion to be misinterpreted as an indictment against their teaching style, but he also saw an opportunity to share proven practices for improving the online teaching and learning experience. Finally a senior faculty member grew tired of the tip-toeing around the subject and said, “If you don’t tell us what is expected, how will we know what to do to succeed?”
Creating a Sense of Time in Online Courses
One of the most useful elements of online courses is that they’re available anytime. But along with the timelessness, there is also an absence of time in many activities and pieces of content in the course that can that can lead to feelings of disconnectedness. How closely do we connect actual time to our student’s online experiences?
Convey Your Online Teaching Persona
In order to effectively establish and maintain an active learning community, the instructor must establish his or her teaching persona and maintain it throughout the course, says Bill Phillips, an instructional designer at the University of Central Florida. Unlike in a face-to-face classroom, one’s persona in the online classroom needs to be deliberately incorporated into course design.
Be Efficient, Not Busy: Time Management Strategies for Online Teaching
Online teaching redefines the faculty member’s schedule. The feeling of being a 24/7 professor can lead to frustration. Managing one’s time as an online teacher can be a challenge. As the popularity of online education continues to grow, teaching faculty need to develop effective time management behaviors to be efficient and not just busy. Here are ten strategies I like to use:
Enhancing Learning Through Vibrant Online Discussions
The discussion board is the heart and soul of online learning. As such, the life and livelihood of online teaching and learning flows through threaded, asynchronous conversations inspired by thought-provoking questions. To maximize the potential of online discussions, these conversations need to be relevant and inspiring dialogs that empower and enlighten online learning.
Tips for Increasing Interactivity in an Online Course
In a follow-up to the online seminar “Creatively Engaging Online Students: Models and Activities,” Curt Bonk, professor of instructional systems technology at Indiana University, offered the following response from a participant who asked, “What is your favorite method to increase interactivity in an online class?”
How to Create Effective Activities for Online Teaching
We’ve all used them, first as students and now as online instructors: activities in a class meant to highlight, spotlight, underline, enhance, or explain some aspect of the subject we are teaching. Too often, not much thought or effort is given to these activities, resulting in outdated and unsuccessful activities. With the right approaches and a bit of knowledge, online instructors can create activities that are dynamic, effective, and interesting.
Recent Seminars
How to Balance Online Learner Needs and Instructor Workload
Instructor workload in online courses can be overwhelming and can make faculty shy away from using more interactive assignments. Yet, encouraging students to take more responsibility for their learning fosters deeper learning for the students and can allow the instructor to manage his or her workload more effectively. This seminar will outline strategies for developing engaging, interactive assignments, establishing instructor presence and managing instructor workload.
Tammy Stuart Peery has been teaching online for over a decade. An assistant professor and English department chair at Montgomery College in Germantown, Md., she has been the faculty chair of the college’s Distance Learning Task Group for five years. Professor Peery has earned Master Course Reviewer certification from Quality Matters. She was a member of the design team for Montgomery College’s online EN102 common course template, and in 2010, she was recognized as the MDLA Distance Educator of the Year.
