Use a bank of comments that are precise, detailed, and clear. The smart online educator is the one who has a bank of comments from which he/she can draw on to give students feedback on any number of items in the course. But there are two important items here that will make these precast comments most effective: 1) Have comments point out not only when something is wrong but also why it is wrong and how to get it right. In this manner, each comment becomes a mini teacher’s aide in the assignment. 2) Adjust (personalize) any comment as is necessary when your comment as written does not exactly match the problem you see in the student’s assignment. This way each comment is a perfect fit for the error, allowing the student to learn more fully.

Do not point out each error a student makes. While students look to you for feedback that will help them improve, this is college, and thus more responsibility falls on the student than in a high school course. Therefore, unless you come across an error in an assignment that you believe is grievous, unusual, or complex enough that a previous comment should be posted again, only point out each new problem once. The following can help encourage students to use their own efforts to hunt out other similar problems that may occur in their assignment: 1) In your overall comment—at the end of the assignment—write something like this: “NOTE: To help you when additional errors have occurred but I have not noted them, I have inserted a + sign at the end of a comment if that error occurs more than once in your essay.” [b] Be sure to insert the + sign at the end of any error if that error has popped up more than once.

No matter the course, be sure you indicate any proofreading errors. Proofreading has nothing to do with knowing how to write. Rather, errors are an indication that the student has rushed through the assignment. This is a habit that must be nipped immediately, as it can prove to be disastrous in many ways outside of school: in a resume, contract proposal, executive summary, report, etc. I take off major points for proofreading errors, and I include in poor proofreading not incorporating any of my draft comments into a final copy of the assignment.

Always point out at least a few positives in various portions of the student’s assignment and in the overall comment. No one likes to read negative after negative after negative. It can be very discouraging. So let the student know a few instances where he or she has gotten it right—or nearly right. This helps take the sting out of an assignment that is loaded with errors, and can serve as a motivator that tells the student he/she does understand and is going in the right direction at times. And carry this through in the overall comment, at the end of the assignment: Be motivational, tell the student to build on your comments, give one major plus comment, and always let the student know you are available for any questions he/she might have.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for 17 years and has a national reputation in the subject, and in writing about and conducting workshops on distance learning. He is currently putting the finishing touches on two online-teaching books.

Excerpted from Teaching Online with Errol: The Online Educator’s Complete Guide to Grading Assignments. Online Classroom (April 2011): 6,8.

The following suggestions (broken into two parts: outside the assignments, i.e., for the course in general, and inside the assignments, i.e., approaches to grading each major assignment) will ensure that you offer students the most useful and positive grading.

Post a worksheet that helps students view your online assignment comments. Many students are new to online courses, and thus have not had experience with assignments being marked and graded online. This could translate into students not having their computers correctly set so they can see your reviewing/tracking feature comments. To minimize this problem, post a sheet—on day one—somewhere in class that students can always access, to give them instructions on how to properly set their computers to view your comments.

Send the students an email indicating that you expect the first assignment grade to be their lowest of the course. Students are often shocked by their first grades in a course, especially if they are new to college, new to the subject (or have not taken a course in the subject for quite some time), and/or you are the type of instructor who is especially thorough. These low grades can be discouraging, but you can offset this by posting an announcement that lets students know you expect their first grades to be the worst in the course (as they have not had prior feedback or assistance from you), and that what is most important in your course is their overall improvement. Further, tell the students that rather than being upset by the grade they should use it as a guide to help them improve. Add that you are not concerned about it because you know the students will simply build on it and become better.

Be sure there are ample resources available to assist students throughout the course. Students will have textbooks and other course-mandated resources, but anything additional you can add to help students understand their lessons in the course, and thus give them as much information as possible to do quality assignments, is a huge plus. Remember that any course set up by a school offers information for the general class; it is you, the instructor, who can augment these resources through additional readings, helpful websites, audio/video clips, and other items that offer additional insights, explanations, and information on the subject(s).

Prior to each upcoming major assignment, post motivational and reminder announcements. Start off each week or session prior to the next major assignment with an announcement, using an audio file such as .mp3 or creating audio using NanoGong, to personalize your concerns and interests in students doing well. This message reminds students of major errors you have seen in the most recent assignment, your suggestions for doing well on the next assignment, and the connection between this academic assignment and their real world of work. This last item is especially important, as it is a nice link between what may seem like work to merely get a grade and preparation to enhance their efforts in the professional workplace.

No matter how clear and detailed your comments, expect students to write “I-don’t-get-it” emails. You could win a Nobel Prize for assignment feedback clarity and students will always write to you about how they are confused, don’t understand, or need more clarification. This is a great thing, actually, and seldom has anything to do with your feedback not being good enough. Rather, you have students who really are interested in improving, to the point that they want to fully understand what you’ve pointed out. These students have taken the time to ask for more feedback (with some exceptions, the ones who really don’t care are not going to take the time to ask for additional assistance). Even if the student’s primary reason for asking is to receive a good final grade in the course, this gives you an opportunity to teach a bit more. So be sure to respond to the student in a timely manner by email, audio message, or phone.

Note: Part 2 of this article will appear on Thursday.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for 17 years and has a national reputation in the subject, and in writing about and conducting workshops on distance learning. He is currently putting the finishing touches on two online-teaching books.

Excerpted from Teaching Online with Errol: The Online Educator’s Complete Guide to Grading Assignments. Online Classroom (April 2011): 6,8.

The purpose for using PowerPoint in a presentation is to support you and your message. In an online presentation, you are still the presenter and you should be there. Narration lets you connect with students and set the context for the presentation. In this article I’ll discuss preparing a narration script for use when narrating your slides.

Why a script?
Don’t think that you can just “wing it” when narrating your slides. I supposed there are some people who can do this, but I can tell you that even with a script, it’s hard to get it exactly right without doing a number of “takes.” For one thing, it’s really easy to trip on your words even with a script. So it’s inevitable that you’ll record narration multiple times in order to sound the way you want to sound. If you try to do it without a script, there’s a good chance that you’ll need to rerecord a multitude of times, more times than if you prepare a script.

In addition, writing a script helps you think through the sequencing of your slides and the best way to present what you are talking about. Once you start adding narration text to go along with your slides, you’ll see holes in your presentation where you need to add slides and places where you need to change the order of the presentation. So the script helps you think through the best way to present your content.

Preparing the script
Writing a narration script is about writing words for students to hear, not read. And that difference makes all the difference.

To write listening-friendly scripts, you’ll want to do some things a bit differently than when you are writing for reading. Audio should sound friendly and conversational. Use contractions and feel free to use sentence fragments, just like you would use in conversation. Use a friendly tone.

Practice reading the script aloud before you narrate the slides and fix anything that sounds stuffy or awkward. When reading your script aloud, you are bound to find words, phrases, and sections that need rewriting. Try to use less complex sentences, because complex sentences can be confusing to follow. Complex sentences can be reread when written, but having to replay an entire slide is more frustrating than rereading a sentence.

Write the script so that you aren’t tempted to ad-lib. What I mean is, if you think it might be good to put in a few comments that sound off-the-cuff, write them into the script, and don’t try to ad-lib them while narrating.

Plan audio “white space” and try not to talk too long on a given slide. If you have a block of dense text, plan where you will stop and take a breath and write it in the script as WAIT or BREATHE. If you have a lot of text on a single slide, consider how to make your wording more concise; if you need to keep all the text, consider dividing the narration among two or more slides.

Creating narration scripts in PowerPoint
PowerPoint makes it very easy to create a narration script. Simply write the narration that goes along with each slide in the Slide Notes pane that appears below each slide in Normal View, as shown below.

Once you enter the narration for each slide, output the script by selecting Publish from the Office button in the top left corner (PowerPoint 2007 and 2010) and then selecting Create Handouts in Microsoft Word> Notes next to slides.

PowerPoint will send thumbnails of your slides and the narration (notes) for each slide script to Microsoft Word and you’ll have a Word document with each slide and the corresponding narration. An example of one row of the table created during this process appears below.

In this section, I’ll be discussing the research surveys and questions related to synchronous e-learning. Although technologies such as chat and IM are considered synchronous e-learning, I’ll be mainly talking about virtual classroom technologies here

Voila! Your narration script! To use this Word narration script, I print it and use it when narrating my slides.

Patti Shank, PhD, CPT, is a widely recognized information and instructional designer and writer and author, who helps others build valuable information and instruction. She can be reached through her website: www.learningpeaks.com.

Reprinted from Online Teaching Fundamentals: Making Online PowerPoint Content Engaging: Writing a Narration Script. Online Classroom (January 2011): 4,5.

Engage Online Students with Targeted Feedback

Wouldn’t you want to know if you’ve veered off track? And wouldn’t you want to know as soon as you took a wrong turn and not another twenty miles down the road? The sooner you know, the sooner you can correct your course and get headed in the right direction.

video Online Seminar • Tuesday, June 19, 2012 • 1:00 pm Eastern • $349

That’s the idea behind student-instructor feedback. Imagine communicating directly with students about what is working and what isn’t. Picture an open and ongoing dialog that allows you to make necessary adjustments right away instead of waiting until the next time you teach a course to implement improvements.

With good feedback tools and practices, you don’t have to wait for failed exams to find out that a majority of students misunderstood a key concept. You don’t have to wait for end-of-term assessments to discover that students never felt engaged or found a new technology cumbersome. You can find out exactly what students are thinking and why when you have effective and constructive two-way communication channels in place.

Find out how to create beneficial student-instructor discourse in Engage Online Students with Targeted Feedback, coming Tuesday, June 19.

In just one hour, online communication guru Jill Schiefelbein shares the tools and strategies that will help you establish and maintain a respectful and fruitful feedback loop with your students. You will learn how to engage students and generate insights that lead to immediate improvements in instructor performance, student achievement, and course quality.

Having taken, taught, and developed online courses for the past ten years, Jill Schiefelbein knows that the dynamics of virtual classrooms are different than those of traditional classrooms. As the owner of Impromptu Guru, a company that helps individuals and groups improve online and face-to-face communication, Schiefelbein stays on the cutting-edge of online communication advancements. She is always ready with fresh ideas and new tactics as technologies evolve and expectations rise.

Schiefelbein also teaches as an adjunct faculty member for Arizona State University, where she previously served as the Director of Online Programs for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. While there she developed the office of online programs and grew it into an organization with hundreds of online course offerings across dozens of academic units.

In Engage Online Students with Targeted Feedback, Schiefelbein explains why open lines of communication can lead to better educational outcomes. She also shares her best practices and favorite technological tools—many of which are free and easy to access and use.

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In just 60 minutes Schiefelbein prepares participants to:

• Understand and express the role communication plays in an online student’s course experiences and learning processes;
• Identify appropriate strategies and methods for giving and receiving feedback;
• Utilize multimedia technologies to deliver useful and purposeful feedback back and forth with students; and
• Maintain an effective communication loop that increases student interactivity, performance, and satisfaction.

An instructor’s willingness to listen and respond to student comments—and even criticism—conveys a sincere commitment to their academic improvement and success. That is not lost on students. Allowing them to share feedback fosters a sense of community. Thus, students become more engaged and grow more willing to help their peers who may struggle to grasp concepts or utilize multimedia tools. Sometimes other tech-savvy students share timesaving tips or recommend new multimedia features that enhance or clarify course material. Everyone benefits in this environment, and course evaluations and recommendations will reflect that.

Cost to Attend:
With our new Online Seminar Package, you no longer have to decide whether you want to attend the live event or get a copy of the recording on CD. Now you get both — plus on-demand access for seven days, a copy of the seminar transcript, and all the handouts and supplemental materials. All for $349.

Plus, you are welcome to invite as many people to the seminar as you wish. Many schools fill a meeting room, and then continue the conversation after the seminar concludes. For those who can’t make the live event, the on-demand and CD formats are great options.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal website for unlimited access by the entire campus community.

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All seminars include a discussion guide for facilitators
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

• What are the two greatest difficulties you had taking this course in an online environment?
• What three things surprised you most by taking this course in an online learning environment?
• What three things would you change about this course, assuming it were also taught in an online learning environment?

Despite the small sample size (19), Zuck has gleaned some useful information that has influenced how she teaches the course. (She continues to ask students these questions to get a larger sample and more useful insights.)

Many of the students were first-time online learners, and their comments reflected this. The following themes emerged from the students’ comments:

• Time management is important.
• The course required more work than expected.
• Some students missed being in the classroom.
• Some students wanted more peer interaction.
• Some students felt disconnected.
• The course required commitment and motivation.
• Some students wanted more input from the instructor.
• Some found the course interesting and easy to navigate.

“I was somewhat surprised by their responses. One of the comments that came out pretty strongly was, ‘This is so much more work that I thought it would be,’” Zuck says.

This surprise at the amount of work involved in the course came despite expectations clearly delineated in the syllabus, which included details about threaded discussions and weekly exercises, as well as an explanatory paragraph for each assignment.

Students were very positive about a community-service assignment, but they did struggle to find the time to spend the required 20 hours working with a community partner. Given the frequency of this concern, Zuck has reduced the number of hours students spend in the field to 15.

To help students manage their time better, Zuck has changed the ways she manages assignments. For example, rather than establishing Sunday night assignment deadlines, which are typical in other online courses and can create workload/time management issues for students, Zuck sets deadlines throughout the week to avoid the “Sunday night crunch.”

On larger assignments, Zuck has implemented several milestone deadlines to help keep students on track and provide feedback. “I have found that sometimes my communication or how my students are reading my instructions can create some confusion. The milestones help keep me making sure I give good feedback to students on their work, and it gives them the opportunity to turn in a better paper at the end,” Zuck says.

To improve clarity, Zuck provides a rubric and examples for each assignment and sends each student three feedback emails per week. “I found that with online learning, students really like the rubrics because it’s a way for me to communicate my expectations. It’s in a little bit different format, and when the students get their grades they can very easily see where I mark the points off in each category. Rubrics have really helped me in my communication with the students,” Zuck says.

Self-confidence and motivation were issues for some students in the study. Zuck decided to send weekly inspirational/motivational quotes to the class. “I have had some students email me back and say, ‘Wow! That really made my day!’ It’s a small thing, but at least the students who took this course realize that they may need some positive influence in their world,” Zuck says.

Zuck also asks permission to post exemplary work to serve as examples for others as a way to improve morale and motivate students, and has established an open student forum for students to post and request assistance from other students, as a way to create connections among students. The forum also provides a space for students to share their projects with each other.

Zuck will continue to ask these three questions in future sections of the course and will use the feedback to shape the course. She also will look at other ways to solicit student feedback. “We, as instructors, should look for opportunities throughout the semester to get feedback from students. From an assessment point of view, it can be very valuable,” she says.

Reprinted from Online Classroom (February 2011): 3.

All too often, instructors with the best intentions try to implement these concepts by being hyper responsive, trying to maintain as close to a 24/7 presence in the online classroom as possible and responding to each student discussion posting, blog, or wiki. Such an approach, however, leaves instructors exhausted, burned out, or frustrated. Worse, too much instructor presence can actually impede students from taking more responsibility for their learning, prevent critical thinking, and downplay the value of student-to-student interaction.

Others try to meet this need through the use of automated feedback to provide instant canned responses to student work, but this approach can leave students wondering if a “roboteacher” is in charge of the class rather than a real person. Furthermore, “building a community of learners” is often interpreted as a directive to create group projects for the sake of student interaction, even though many teachers groan at the thought of another difficult to manage group project that is time consuming and unpopular with students.

Online instructors can avoid these pitfalls and truly reap the benefits of strong presence and building a community if they clearly communicate how and when they will provide feedback to students and design assignments and materials that focus on student interaction from the beginning.

The benefits of designing and facilitating a course with strong student-to-student interaction are too powerful to ignore. Students become more engaged in an interactive class, and retention rates improve. They also feel less isolated in the online environment when they have a solid connection to their peers. In addition, students must think more critically in a class with high levels of student-to-student interaction, really engaging more in thinking about and applying the material rather than simply skimming the surface of it. Harnessing the students’ perspectives and interests creates more and varied class discussions that are truly relevant to their needs and abilities.

Clearly, though, in order to bring the students into a more prominent position, the role of the instructor must shift. In a course that is primarily instructor-led, the teacher is the center of the action and attention. Students rely on the teacher for correct answers, often without taking the time to explore why those answers are correct or the process used to arrive at them. In this type of environment, the instructor can feel overwhelmed by student questions, and students can feel isolated from others in their classes. While material is delivered efficiently, it is not necessarily delivered effectively. In contrast, a course with student-to-student interaction places the learner at the center of the action and attention. The instructor becomes a facilitator rather than a director, responding to and encouraging student ideas rather than simply answering questions. In this environment, the teacher has more time to provide substantive comments because he/she is not responding to every question. Students feel less isolated and are more proactive in their learning because they are engaging with others.

Encouraging student-to-student interaction in online courses
There are a number of ways to encourage student-to-student interaction in online courses. Of utmost importance is setting the expectation for student participation from the first day they log in to the course. The course syllabus should set clear guidelines for participation expectations (number of posts, frequency of posts, types of posts, sample student posts) as well as netiquette expectations. The instructor does need to plan to be more frequently present in the first few weeks to encourage and reinforce this participation. It’s particularly important that instructors notice when students aren’t participating and give them a gentle nudge to reinforce how important their interaction is through an email or phone call. As the course progresses, each major assignment should have a student-to-student interactive component that is clearly explained and modeled in the assignment description.

In addition, students should be provided with rubrics or other measures that clearly indicate how their interaction with each other will be assessed and why it’s important to their understanding of the material. When instructors clearly communicate a relevant purpose for the interaction as well as a clear assessment method, students become more confident and interested in participating.

Another element that is especially key is including a self-reflective component, where students can think about how and when they are participating and make a plan for how they might participate even more fully. Once students are given the opportunity to take stock of how much they’ve done and learned by participating with each other, they really grow to value the opportunities the teacher provides to interact.

As a course moves forward, instructors can then be more targeted in their communication with students, sending personalized feedback each week to a different group of students, or summarizing a discussion rather than responding to each post within it. Doing so allows the student interaction to be the focus of the discussion rather than the instructor’s response to each individual being paramount.

While creating a facilitation plan encouraging student-to-student interaction is essential, creating a highly interactive course balanced with a strong instructor presence is more than an issue of facilitation strategy; it really begins at the course design level. Incorporating assignments such as student-led discussions, wikis or blogs, student-prepared study guides, student-generated test questions, peer assessments, group projects, problem-based assignments, and question/answer areas in which students can respond to each other is the foundation for generating student participation. Similarly, discussion questions or topics need to be carefully designed to generate multiple thoughtful responses rather than soliciting simple yes or no or single correct answer responses. When this type of interaction is built into a course from the ground up through scaffolded or interrelated assignments, student-to-student interaction becomes the main expectation of the course, rather than the exception.

Increasing student-to-student interaction in online courses asks learners to become stronger critical thinkers. They must not only read and understand the text, but must also develop good questions that elicit responses from their classmates and formulate responses that further the discussion and encourage ideas from others. True, sometimes, they’ll get some things wrong—but those can be used as teachable moments, with other students explaining their different answers and how they arrived at them, and certainly, the teacher will still be present to clarify and extend the discussions as needed. When students respond to each other, they are not only thinking more deeply, they are building community and learning to work as teams. Students become more engaged with each other and the class and are often more successful as a result. Implementing strategic course design and targeted interaction with students allows instructors to create a balance that is to the benefit of both teachers and students.

Tammy Stuart Peery is an assistant professor and English department chair at Montgomery College in Germantown, Md. In 2010 she was recognized at the Maryland Distance Education Association’s Distance Educator of the Year.

Samantha Streamer Veneruso is an associate professor and English department chair at Montgomery College in Rockville, Md. She is a certified Quality Matters online course reviewer and her course En 101, Techniques of Reading and Writing I, was awarded Quality Matters certification.

Excerpted from Online Classroom (January 2011): 3,8

The following are suggestions for conveying a positive, supportive, and enthusiastic personality.

Establish a friendly and inviting personality on day one of class. You have only one chance to make a first impression, and in the online classroom this is especially true—and important—as your personality on day one can be examined, experienced, and revisited throughout the course. Thus, any postings on day one that speak of you must convey that you care about the class, the students, and the subject, and that you are looking forward to the course and are eager to help your students.

Never confuse personality with teaching strategy. One can have the right—the best—teaching strategies ever created, yet a bland or dull online personality can make those teaching strategies nothing more than two-dimensional. Once those strategies are sprinkled with heavy doses of an upbeat and just downright nice personality, they truly come alive—and the students will react in a more engaged manner.

Sometimes you may need be an actor who wears the right personality. Your everyday, “Hey, this is me” personality might not be the one that is right for online teaching, and that’s fine…as long as you can play the role of an online instructor with a great, enthusiastic personality for your students (as well as your online supervisors, support team, and colleagues). Students take their lead from you—the way you come across to them will determine just how engaged and motivated they remain throughout the course.

Use your interest in the subject to help build your online teaching personality. You were selected to teach your subject partially because of your academic and/or professional expertise and interest in the subject, so share it with your students. Beyond what has been prestocked in your course, you can add articles, pictures, essays, cartoons, interviews, YouTube (and the like) snippets, and factoids that add richness and depth to your subject. The students will immediately know you really are “into” the subject, and your excitement and enthusiasm for the subject will spill over to your students.

Control knee-jerk reactions. Students can write or do things that get us upset. And we can make egregious errors in our hasty reactions to these student mistakes and oversights that may not only cost us our students’ respect and rapport, but possibly our jobs as well. So hold back—take some time before you respond, and if you don’t have the time—such as in a live chat, a phone call, or a videoconference—always remember that your actions and reactions are not merely yours but also the school’s, and because you are the instructor you are always held to a higher standard than your students are.

Be careful of your vocabulary choice. Each of us has words we use on a regular basis; they are part of who and what we are, and they often simply pour out. But our online courses demand that we pay special attention to the words we write, the context of those words, and the perception of the message we are trying to get across. Once posted, our words will live on throughout the course, and thus we must focus on the vocabulary we choose.

Help your personality come alive with audio and/or audiovisual. Today’s technology allows us to get closer to our students—and lets our personalities really shine through. Skype, MP3, Twitter, Facebook, Jing, Adobe Connect, Prezi, Wimba, and other tools can take us to our students in an audio and/or visual way and thus allows students to see and hear an instructor who is excited, enthusiastic, caring, and dedicated to his or her students, the subject, and the course.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for 17 years and has a national reputation in the subject, writing and conducting workshops on distance learning. He is currently putting the finishing touches on two online teaching books.

Excerpted from Teaching Online with Errol: Personality DOES Matter in Teaching Online! Online Classroom (Oct. 2010): 6,7.

Online Student Engagement Tools and Strategies

Most online students, even those who are successful, will tell you it takes an extra dose of motivation to stay on top of their assignments compared to the traditional classroom. No wonder online courses have an attrition rate that’s 10 – 20 percent higher than their face-to-face counterparts.

The anytime/anywhere convenience of online learning sometimes makes it too convenient … to procrastinate, forget about, and become otherwise disengaged.

For faculty teaching in the online classroom, this reality underscores the importance of having activities that build student engagement and help create a sense of community among their geographically dispersed students.

Online Student Engagement Tools and Strategies features 11 articles pulled from the pages of Online Classroom newsletter and provides practical advice from online instructors who recognize the value of engagement and its role in student retention and success.

Online Student Engagement Tools and Strategies

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Here are just a few of the articles you will find in this 22-page report:

• Engaging Students with Synchronous Methods in Online Courses
• Indicators of Engagement in the Online Classroom
• Teaching Online With Errol: A Tried and True Mini-Guide to Engaging Online Students
• Engage Online Learners with Technology: A Free Tool Kit
• Promoting Student Participation and Involvement in Online Instruction: Suggestions from the Front

In short, this special report explains how adjustments in tone, technology, teaching presence and organization can bring positive changes to student learning.

Join the Faculty Focus community for full access to all our special reports!

Faculty Focus contains a wealth of valuable material on all of the key issues that matter to today’s top faculty and administrators. It’s packed with strategies, tips, and other information you can use on the topics that impact your students, your school, and your work, including:

• Student Engagement
• Instructional Design
• Online Education
• Classroom Management
• Educational Assessment
• Teaching with Technology
• Faculty Development
• Curriculum Development
• Trends in Higher Education
• And much, much more.

Online Student Engagement Tools and Strategies

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Selecting and preparing mentors
Widman, a former CFO for a nonprofit organization, drew on friends and colleagues in the nonprofit sector to serve as mentors. “While I was going through the process of lining up my friends to do this, they in turn were talking to contacts of theirs who I had never met but who expressed a willingness and interest to get involved,” Widman says.

Most of these mentors are willing to participate semester after semester, perhaps due in part to the culture of the nonprofit sector, but also because Widman does not ask too much of these mentors and is clear about their role.

“I have to be very clear in terms of the expectations and constraints that I’m going to put on the contact between the student and them,” Widman says.

The top concern is the amount of time involved. Widman explains to them that they are not surrogate professors and will not be involved in grading students’ work. The course is 12 weeks long, and mentoring begins in week six or seven.

Students make the first contact with the mentors via email, and Widman instructs mentors to respond to each email with 48 hours. Students are asked to limit their contact with their mentors to two emails per week. Mentors can answer questions and offer advice, but they are not to rewrite students’ assignments.

Preparing students
Contacting a mentor for advice can be intimidating for some students. Widman helps by providing background information and advice on how to work with mentors. “I lay out the mentors’ background so they understand the resources available to them and give them an idea of the types of things they might want to ask. I have a discussion board where students post the types of questions they might want to ask. I tell them they have free range to steal someone else’s question and ask it of their mentor,” Widman says.

Student-student interaction
One semester, Widman assigned students in pairs to each mentor with the idea that working as a team would create a good team-learning experience. This arrangement made sense in theory, but Widman found that the compressed time period and the logistics of students having to coordinate their efforts limited the amount of interaction they had with the mentor.

Students do have opportunities to interact with each other about the mentor experience on the discussion board, however. Although they rarely volunteer information about their interactions with mentors, students are usually willing to offer advice to other students who ask for it. “It’s not unusual for a comment to come through that says, ‘I asked my mentor a similar question, and this is the answer I got. ….’ Every once in a while students will ask me to reconcile opinions from different mentors. The nonprofit sector is not monolithic, so sometimes I reconcile those answers. But more often than not, students are interested in seeing similarities even though one might be dealing with an economic development agency while another is dealing with a nonprofit health clinic,” Widman says.

Student reaction
Student reaction to the mentoring experience has been positive. “There’s a lot of surprise. This is something that is very new to them. They recognize the uniqueness of this, and by that second or third email they see the power of it. They have someone who is not the professor that they could get an answer on a content issue from. I think that’s pretty unusual,” Widman says.

The college has added sections of the course because of the increased student demand based on word of mouth. In the most recent course evaluation, 80 percent of students rated the course as exceptionally beneficial.

Excerpted from Kelly, R. “Providing Practitioner Mentors for Online Learners.” Online Classroom (June 2010): 3,5. Print.

Using synchronous tools may at first seem impractical for online instructors. If students are taking online classes, doesn’t that mean they want to be able to work whenever, wherever, with no time or date restrictions? In many cases, yes—but there are times when online students need one-on-one help, and synchronous tools are able to facilitate that support much more effectively than the usual email back-and-forth or phone conversation. I’ve found that when I’ve used synchronous tools with students, they were more willing to ask questions and interact with their fellow students in the classroom afterwards. Let’s explore some reasons why.

• Synchronous tools can help humanize the classroom. Instead of words posted on an electronic screen, we become real to our students, not just words or avatars or photos on a screen — we become human.
• Setting up open office hours via a synchronous tool allows students to reach out in a specific time window with questions and get a real-time answer. The power of that communication is twofold. First, students immediately get a sense of community. Someone is there, willing to work with them on their concerns and to answer their questions. Secondly, students can still reach out for help using their computer, and do not have to reach for their phones to connect to instructors to hear their voice.
• Many synchronous tools allow us to use video or face-to-face chat, allowing the student to see our faces as we speak to them about their direct concern. Visual learners can watch us talk through a problem using video and screen capture or web navigation tools. Screen sharing tools, such as those embedded in Elluminate, allow students to share their screens with us, so we can take a look at a paper draft in process or a math problem that’s only halfway completed.
• Both students and instructors are learning while interacting. Communicating in the online classroom is very different than in a traditional face-to-face classroom. Students utilizing synchronous tools to discuss issues with instructors are required to develop a new communication skill set, learning to navigate a different and unique way of communicating to reach the desired result. Similarly, instructors must not only model effective communication with students during the session, but also test and stretch their skill set in working with new technologies to reach out to students effectively. Both instructors and students learn what works and what doesn’t, but instead of doing this individually, they are learning as a team, simultaneously. That distinction is important.
• Synchronous tools require real-time teamwork. Both instructors and students must be open and willing to reach out in order to find a solution for an issue, and this requires working together in tandem—brainstorming, discussing, even negotiating. Modeling this for students in the synchronous environment helps students bring it to the asynchronous environment, such as the discussion board or group project areas of the course.

Michelle Kosalka is the program chair for English and Communications at Herzing University Online, and is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She was recently named the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU) 2011 National Teacher of the Year.

Selecting and Using Technologies in Online & Blended Courses

Just as smart phones, Twitter, Facebook and all of Web 2.0 are transforming communication, they’re also changing how teachers teach and students learn. These new technologies could encourage learner-centered teaching and help students learn skills they’ll need to succeed.

Like any tool, digital technologies must be used appropriately to realize their potential.

Discover how to maximize the effectiveness of 21st century teaching tools with Selecting and Using Technologies in Online & Blended Courses, a 60-minute audio online seminar with noted presenter Tony Bates.

During the seminar Bates shares a comprehensive framework for educational technology decisions. Known as the SECTIONS Model, this letter-by-letter approach includes instructional and administrative criteria as follows:

S Is the technology appropriate for students?
E Is it easy to use and reliable?
C What are its direct and indirect costs?
T How will it support teaching and learning?
I What kinds of interaction will it make possible?
O What organizational issues will be involved?
N How much of a novelty is this technology?
S Will it let us start courses and make changes with the speed we need? Is it secure?

Order the CD + Transcript

Starting with this framework, you’ll learn:

• When to use face-to-face, blended learning, or online learning
• When to use a learning management system
• When and how to create personal learning environments
• When to blend a learning management system and personal learning environments
• When to use Web 2.0 tools, and for what purposes
• How to design learner-centered teaching.

Who will benefit:
This is an advanced level seminar, perfect for universities, colleges, training organizations and people in the following positions:

• Curriculum developers
• Educational technologists
• Instructional designers
• Faculty
• Instructors
• Program directors

When you order the recording of this seminar on CD, you’ll also receive the complete transcript.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal web site for unlimited access by members of the campus community.

Order the CD + Transcript

All seminars include a discussion guide for facilitators
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar now includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

As the online student population continues its double-digit growth rate, and some organizations are projecting that by 2020 students will take up to 60 percent of their courses online, forward-thinking higher education institutions are looking for new approaches to student engagement and retention to meet the needs of the online student population. It is a population that is often made up of students from different generations, ethnic backgrounds, professional experiences, and family responsibilities.

One institution that is taking an innovative approach to online student engagement is Drexel University, which has won awards for its online first-year experience program in its fully online Master of Science in Higher Education (MSHE) Program.

“Some of the online students will never set foot on the Drexel campus but they have a right to the same college experience as a person living on campus in a residence hall,” said David A. Ruth, PhD, dean of students at Drexel. “While some data might suggest that online students don’t really want that level of engagement or participation, we have found that if you invite them, they will come. … We want our students—no matter where they are, no matter what campus or what format—to feel and know they are part of the Drexel experience.”

In the online seminar Retaining Online Students with a First-Year Experience Program, Ruth and Kristen Betts, EdD, an associate clinical professor in the Goodwin College of Professional Studies at Drexel University, shared some program best practices for “bringing the campus” to the online students.

“We focused on the concept of Online Human Touch and how can we personalize the learning experience for that student,” said Betts. “What we’ve found through our research is students are more likely to persist in their online courses if they’re engaged in and outside of their courses and the educational experience is personalized.”

According to Betts, this involves much more than simply having students participate in discussion boards, communicate with faculty via email, or work in online groups. The Online Human Touch concept is a holistic approach that combines the efforts of the program director, faculty, adjunct faculty, and staff developing a personal connection between Drexel and each student.

For example, each student who’s accepted receives a congratulatory phone call from the program director or academic adviser welcoming him or her to the program. The students then go through an online orientation where the presenters include the Dean of Students and faculty, as well as representatives from the writing center, library, support services, financial aid, disability services and student life.

During week two, a time when many new online students start to feel overwhelmed, the program hosts a virtual tea party. Students receive in the mail a signed invitation with a sachet of tea inviting them to join their classmates for an informal chat with instructors. Typically, 75 to 80 percent of the students attend the virtual tea.

“One of the problems is current students benefit little from the end-of-course surveys,” said Phil Ice, EdD, associate vice president of research and development at American Public University System. “Whenever you’re measuring what the student thinks of the course or their perceived learning, instructor performance, the way assets are utilized, you’re capturing that information retrospectively. So you’re not really helping the students who are engaged right now.”

Another problem relates to student demographics and learning needs, which can vary widely.

“If you’re a large campus, for instance, that has an on-campus cohort, an online cohort, and maybe a distance-based cohort, the end-of-course survey data can show differences between each of these populations that may call for the deployment of different design strategies, and different types of content for each of these three different cohort groups,” Ice said.

During the online video seminar, Data Driven Decision Making for Online Instructional Design, Ice explained how faculty and instructional designers can work together to better utilize the various and disparate data sets at their disposal to create a more complete picture of student engagement and learning.

Ice recommends using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, which is grounded in a collaborative constructive view and examines the following independent but overlapping elements of the educational experience:

Social Presence – This is the degree to which students feel socially and emotionally connected to each other and to the instructor in a computer-mediated environment. Elements of social presence are demonstrated through affective expression, open communication and group cohesion. CoI questions that measure social presence include: “I felt comfortable conversing in the online medium” and “I felt that my point of view was acknowledged by other course participants.”

Teaching Presence – This involves the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes leading to personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes. Elements of teaching presence include setting curriculum and activities, shaping constructive discourse, and focusing and resolving issues. CoI questions that measure teaching presence include: “The instructor clearly communicated important course topics” and “The instructor helped to focus discussion on relevant issues in a way that helped me to learn.”

Cognitive Presence – The extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse in a critical community of inquiry. Elements of cognitive presence include triggering event (sense of puzzlement), exploration (sharing information and ideas), integration (connecting ideas), and resolution (synthesizing and applying new ideas). CoI questions that measure cognitive presence include: “Problems posed increased my interest in course issues” and “I have developed solutions to course problems that can be applied in practice.”

A simple, but often-overlooked solution is to require students to submit work on a daily/weekly basis. Assignments that tie reading to the application of material are a standard part of pedagogy, but far too often we presume that this connection will be made without providing a structure. We assume that college students are mature enough as learners to automatically connect the dots. Certainly some students are, but many—especially those who are first-generation college students—lack the sophistication to employ a holistic approach to their own learning.

What types of practical, out-of-class assignments are needed? Certainly, some of the work can be rote; there is no substitution for quality repetition. Many texts now come with test banks that can easily be uploaded into Blackboard or course management systems. Quizzes that reinforce vocabulary and principles, once set up, can be required at least once a week.

At least part of the assignments should, however, connect the reading with previously covered material in an analytical way. The idea of creating a thread is not unlike that of online blogs in which a person’s history becomes part of the present context. For maximal learning, this threaded learning should be consistent (daily) and predictable. These threads can be part of a small discussion board or blog group and can contain material that connects assigned reading to classroom activities (lectures, labs, etc.).

The completion and submission of daily assignments seems like such an obvious practical strategy, but many instructors just do not require this. The reasons are obvious: assignments demand assessment, and of course, assessment requires time. The key ingredient, therefore, is to design assignments that are easy to grade (multiple-choice questions can require analytical thinking) but challenging.

Step two in the thread is creating a daily in-class assessment. This works well as a bonus-points opportunity and when presented precisely at the class start time, provides an incentive for students to get to class and to be there on time. These assessments are brief (three to four carefully crafted multiple-choice questions will suffice), and they include material from the reading as well as the homework. Therefore, if the student did the out-of-class assignment/reading, he/she would likely score well on the in-class assessment.

The feedback that comes from daily assessment can serve two important purposes. First, the instructor gains insight into how the students, both individually and collectively, are doing in the course. Second, and most important, the student can see tangible evidence of how he/she is performing.

In conclusion, it is natural to find ourselves thinking, “Students aren’t self-motivated” or “Students should be mature enough to direct their own learning” or even, “Students just don’t care”. The truth is that a small percentage of students will take ownership of their education without intervention, but many more will not. This does not mean that the other students can’t do the work or that they don’t care. It merely reflects competitions for their time that override the requirements that we as teachers lay out. A return to carefully planned and consistent assignments and assessments can lead to impressive rewards, when it counts.

Teresa K. Dail is an assistant professor in the Department of Human Performance & Leisure Studies at North Carolina A&T State University.

Excerpted from Enabling: A Strategy for Improving Learning, Online Classroom, Feb. 2010, 3.

But a funny thing happened in John Orlando’s courses when he started using VoiceThread — students began posting more than what was required, and they were far more engaged. In addition, he says, students reported that they enjoyed sharing their thoughts on what they were learning.

A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos. It allows users to navigate slides and leave comments in five ways – using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video. Typically, the instructor loads his or her narrative slides and students can then add their comments at any point within the lecture.

In the recent online seminar How to Engage Students with Interactive Online Lectures, Orlando, instructional resource manager at the Norwich University School of Graduate Studies, provided examples of VoiceThreads, and explained how to create one for your course.

According to Orlando, the advantages of using VoiceThread for your online discussions include:

• Student driven discussion: Discussion originates from the students themselves, and thus students tend to bring more of themselves into the conversation. Discussion is freer and more open, touching on a wider variety of issues.
• A growing lecture: Discussion in a traditional online forum never leaves the classroom.
  The class is archived and discussion forums are wiped clean for the next group, meaning
  that the insights are lost. But because discussion in VoiceThread is attached to the lecture itself, which can then be used for the next class, students are adding to the lecture, which grows from class to class. Students contribute to an ongoing conversation with future classes.
• Improved social presence: Students find that the ability to see and hear their instructor and classmates improves the sense of social presence of others in the classroom.
• Better understanding of nuance: Students are better able to understand the nuances of discussion when they can hear the tone in someone’s voice.
• Student projects: VoiceThread is a great way for students to deliver projects and solicit feedback from others.

The seminar also included a demonstration of VideoAnt, which allows users to make text-based annotations to online videos, and advice on how to use digital storytelling to help personalize the learning experience.

Five Ways to Improve Interaction in Your Online Courses

How successful students are in your online course depends on many different factors … not the least of which are their interactions with and connection to you. From an instructor’s perspective, however, creating meaningful interactions with virtual students creates real challenges.

Online education isn’t just a matter of using the same materials in the same ways that you’d use in a traditional classroom, but there are ways to effectively adapt your teaching content and style to the various communication channels available.

Many workshops and seminars about online teaching focus on higher-level technologies or activities that instructors can use to engage students. Five Ways to Improve Interaction in Your Online Courses is different. It takes a practical, well-rounded approach that will work no matter how little or how much online experience you possess. It’s a “small step” approach that will help you see exactly what’s needed to improve your skills and move forward with confidence.

Your instructor for this video online course is Jill Schiefelbein, an accomplished online course manager at Arizona State University. Her combination of experience, skill, and enthusiasm will help you make the most of what you learn.

Here’s a brief clip from the seminar:

In 60 fast-paced minutes you will learn about:

• The variety of communication channels available in an online environment
• The pros and cons of each channel — video conferencing, audio conference, webinars, Skype, and more
• Customized tools to help strengthen communication with each channel
• Understanding media richness theory and how it affects online engagement and interaction
• Strategies for injecting personality, increasing student engagement, and enhancing interaction in an online class.

The seminar also includes valuable supplemental materials, including a list of “Dos and Don’ts” and a “next steps” guide.

Order this Seminar

Who will benefit:

• Online instructors
• Curriculum specialists and developers
• Faculty development coordinators

When you order the recording of this video seminar on CD, you’ll also receive a PDF of the seminar transcript, all for the same price as attending the seminar live.

A Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected website for unlimited access by all the members of the campus community.

New for 2011! A Discussion Guide for Facilitators.

Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar now includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

1. Require students to give feedback to a peer each time they post to a forum.
2. Assign critical friends for feedback on blog posts or reflection activities.
3. Have a minimum post rule of three sentences. Sentence #1 is “I agree with so and so”; sentence #2 is “I think [or I believe] this or that”; and in sentence #3 students finally must say something substantive.
4. Combine asynchronous discussion with a synchronous visit from the expert before and after the discussion starts.
5. Use Flash animations of content with reflection.

During the seminar, Bonk elaborated on the use of Flash animations: “One short two-minute video does more for learning than reading the book for four hours. Reading about the Enron crisis for two years, I learned nothing. Watching a video of it, I learned everything I needed to know.

“I’m overstating a little bit here, but you get the point. And these have become cheaper. They’ve become more functional. They’ve become easier to embed with broadband. If we don’t consider Flash animations in certain subject areas, we’re not proceeding in an interactive, engaging way with our students, especially visual learners. …”

For information about ordering recordings or transcripts of this online seminar, go here »

Reprinted from “Tips from the Pros – How to Increase Interactivity in an Online Course.” Online Classroom, Dec. 2009.

When students are asked to help out, either directly or indirectly, a course can become more efficient and will run more smoothly, and the students can become more engaged with fewer concerns. Following are some suggestions on how to make the best use of your students as “assistants.”

Check out any suggestions and information found in discussion or chat forums. In the discussion and chat features of online courses, students offer information, insights, criticism, and suggestions on specific instructor questions related to the course—as well as on other student postings, the course overall, and even the instructor himself/herself. Read these thoroughly; there is much to be learned about problems in the present course, concerns students have with the subject matter, and confusion about instructor directions or comments.

Get a better sense of student learning needs from their lives. One of the biggest complaints students have about online courses is that they are too generic and theoretical, with little or no thought given to a course’s application in students’ real lives, in terms of “This is what I’m doing now” or “This is what I will be doing.” Yet when course information does touch the students in a meaningful, truly useful manner, it keeps students more engaged in the assignments and creates a better rapport throughout the course.

Two ways to ensure this are by reading the student biographical information that typically is posted at the beginning of a course and by posting a relevant question to the class, such as “How will the information in this course prove helpful in your everyday lives?” Use the information you learn about the students to insert activities, post resources, and offer discussion or chat questions that make the course more pertinent to them.

Post questions that will benefit the students and you—and your future courses. Ask class and individual questions of students relating to their experience in the course, their professional interests, and their course concerns. Don’t hesitate to ask students about other areas of the subject matter they would like to explore, what they think could make the course a more positive experience, and their overall reaction to your teaching of the course. By seeking this information, you can learn much to refine the course while it is being taught, to direct the course more toward student needs, and to improve upon future courses you teach.

When necessary, employ a buddy system to help weaker students. You will come across a student or two whose computer skills or basics in the subject you’re teaching may be very weak; the attention you must give all your students makes giving intense individual assistance to these students difficult if not impossible. To help, set up a buddy system: ask for student volunteers who will be available to answer another student’s questions during the course. You will find there are always students willing to volunteer; the end result is a class that is stronger and thus more engaged and vibrant. (Note that you should never promise extra credit or the like—it is not fair to the members of the class who may not have those strengths to offer.)

Be aware of problem areas that students encounter in navigating the course site. No course management system or course structure is perfect. Keep a master checklist of all items to look over before a course begins, and add those legitimate ones that students point out. This will only ensure that your next courses go smoother yet.

Let students remind you of your responsibility and role as an online instructor. Each student comes to you for guidance, information, insights, and suggestions on a subject so that he or she can become more adept with that subject. It makes no difference whether this is a core subject for a student’s major, a refresher course for a profession or certification, or an elective: the students themselves serve as a constant reminder that you are in the role of instructor because of your subject knowledge, your ability to teach, your adeptness at instructing online, your high ethical and moral standards, and your commitment to your school’s rules and policies. Never forget any of these elements; when you do, the students lose, the school falters, and you disappoint—all results that you never want in your teaching portfolio.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 14 years and has a national reputation in the subject. He has written and conducted workshops on it and is currently putting the finishing touches on his next book: How to Become the Perfect Online Instructor.

Excerpted from Teaching Online with Errol: The Online Instructor’s Hidden Assistant: The Online Student, Online Classroom, June 2009, 6-7.

While this was a welcome validation for proponents of online learning, the report cautioned “that interpretations of this result, however, should take into consideration the fact that online and face-to-face conditions generally differed on multiple dimensions, including the amount of time that learners spent on task.”

In some ways, because online learning often carries greater expectations and opportunities for interacting with course material and fellow students, an increase in time on task is a natural benefit.

“It’s a tough sell sometimes for teachers to convince students that they need to do more on their own, and I think one of the advantages of online education is that students feel that they have more of an investment [when learning] online and they don’t have you as that learning crutch,” says Ike Shibley PhD, associate professor of chemistry at Penn State Berks.

In the recent online video seminar, Teaching Online vs. F2F: 15 Differences That Affect Learning, Shibley talked about how the online classroom differs from the traditional face-to-face classroom, and suggested strategies for capitalizing on those differences to improve student learning.

Some of the 15 differences he discussed involve:

1. The nature of student collaboration
2. The use of writing
3. Student interaction with content
4. The value of structure
5. The need for immediate feedback
6. The dependence on other professionals
7. The ease of assessment
8. The necessity of learning objects

And yet, despite the differences between online teaching and face-to-face teaching, Shibley says the two have a lot more in common than originally believed because, in the end, effective teaching transcends course format.

“Some of the differences are advantages. Some of the differences are disadvantages. But I think they’re differences in degree not in kind,” he says.

Even though the content may be emotionally engaging, the discussion it generates may not be.

“One of the biggest barriers to online learning is our inability to respond in the moment, unless we happen to be on live chat or video, which is really rare in most of the online learning world,” says Rick Van Sant, associate professor of education at Ferris State University.

That moment after viewing some emotionally engaging content passes quickly. In a typical online learning environment, students react and post to a discussion board or blog and wait for a response. “I think it’s one of the downsides of asynchronous learning. You lose that opportunity for the teachable moment,” Van Sant says. “There are many positive aspects to online learning, such as thoughtful reflection. One of the things I see, the students who do not often volunteer or engage in on-the-fly discussion in a face-to-face classroom will turn around in an online environment and become significant discussants. Not that they’re lazy in the classroom; they just don’t process information on the fly quite like somebody else.”

Despite the limitations of asynchronous communication, it still can create an emotional connection that supports learning. For example, collaborating on a wiki can be just the thing to motivate and engage students.

“If we’re working on a wiki together and you edit something of mine, chances are there’s a mild emotional expression associated with that—I don’t like the edit, I’m sensitive about the edit, or I’m thrilled with the edit. But it’s personal because I wrote it and you changed it. Can I trust you? That’s an emotional experience. It might be a positive emotional experience. It might be a negative one. Whatever it is, it contains that seed, that very small element of an emotional connection to it: ownership.”

Another obstacle to creating emotionally engaging learning environments is that many online instructors are not technologists. “They’re teachers, they know their subjects, but they don’t necessarily do a good job from a pedagogy standpoint,” Van Sant says.

Many online instructors take a teacher-centered approach to pedagogy, posting PowerPoint presentations, notes, readings, assignments, and tests and quizzes and “tell students to go forth and learn,” Van Sant says. “Really good online teachers have taken up the challenge to learn about the various tools.”

“The classroom must be a learning community. In an online environment, you must be sure you are using the tools to make that happen. And these are the blogs, wikis, Web 2.0 tools and social bookmarks, and the discussion boards. The interactivity creates communities. When that happens, you’ve got far greater potential of engaging that otherwise somewhat unengaged student,” Van Sant says.

Instructors who seek to create learner-centered online courses often read the work of Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences and think that for every lesson they’ve got to create eight different kinds of assignments to reach the learning style preferences of all their students. But Van Sant assures them they need not go overboard in accommodating all learning styles.

“The goal isn’t to cater to all eight individual multiple intelligences. It’s about providing, over the range of a course, the opportunity for people to learn and express their learning within their strengths and not always have to operate within their deficits. To do that, you need variety. You need redundancy. You need multiplicity. You need different ways of sharing and knowing. … What happens here is working in a much richer environment. It is a challenge for us to understand that in this rich environment we’ve got to become masters of that domain.”

Excerpted from A Learner-Centered, Emotionally Engaging Approach to Online Learning, Online Classroom, June 2009.