Posts Tagged ‘online discussions’
April 8 - Online Discussion Boards: Assessing What’s Important
By: Stacey Curdie in Online Education
When I first began teaching online, I believed that anytime students wrote anything, they should be held accountable for both spelling and grammar and my discussion rubric reflected that. As a result, I got very brief, very stiff, very formal discussion posts in which students were clearly speaking to me rather than to each other.
April 6 - Six Keys to More Effective Class Discussions
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Effective Teaching Strategies
Students find discussions disillusioning just about as often as faculty do. In the analysis referenced below, students objected when a few fellow classmates dominated the discussion; when the discussion wandered off topic, making it difficult to ascertain main points; and when students participated just for the sake of participating.
November 20 - Questioning Styles for More Effective Discussion Boards
By: Rob Kelly in Asynchronous Learning and Trends
Meaningful online discussions that promote learning and build community usually do not happen spontaneously. They require planning, good use of questioning techniques, and incentives for student participation.
October 30 - Policies for More Meaningful Participation in Online Discussions
By: Rob Kelly in Online Education
One instructor’s study of student participation in online discussions in two of his asynchronous online courses over a five-year period has yielded some interesting results that have influenced how he conducts his courses.
October 19 - Understanding the Instructor’s Role in Facilitating Online Discussions
By: Michelle Everson, PhD. in Asynchronous Learning and Trends
In my classroom-based courses I have always valued discussion as a powerful learning tool that provides students with opportunities to explain their reasoning and understanding, learn different perspectives and points of view, and re-think and possibly revise their own conceptions based on careful reflection of potentially disparate viewpoints. As I prepared to teach my first online course five years ago, it was only natural that discussion would be a part of it.
September 10 - Ethnicity and Social Presence in Online Courses
By: Rob Kelly in Trends in Higher Education
Social presence, “the degree to which a medium is perceived as representing the presence of communication participants,” is an important factor in students’ learning and satisfaction. With online learning reaching across cultures, Judy Teng, educational technologist at the College of Saint Rose, studied how ethnicity affects student perceptions of social presence.
April 29 - Promoting Early, Active Discussion in Online Courses
By: Rob Kelly in Asynchronous Learning and Trends
In a study of student participation in threaded discussions, Scott Warnock, an assistant professor of English at Drexel University, found that students who post early in threaded discussions tend to do better (as measured by course grades) than those who procrastinate.
April 27 - Classroom Management Tips for Online Courses: Dealing with Difficult Students
By: Mary Bart in Distance Learning Administration, Online Education
“Managing student expectations is important in any class but even more so for online and blended courses where it’s easy for students to feel lost,” says Susan Ko, executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). “Even well structured, academically rigorous online classes can have diminished effectiveness due to a lack of clear expectations.”
March 6 - Helping Online Students Become Self-Directed, Engaged Learners
By: Rob Kelly in Online Education
Online course design is crucial to student success. It should reflect the intended learning outcomes and provide enough guidance for students to easily navigate the course without being overly rigid so as to stifle the exploratory aspects of learning, says Mary Hricko, library director and associate professor of library and media services at Kent State
February 17 - Four Tips for Better Online Instruction
By: Rob Kelly in Distance Learning Administration, Online Education
In course evaluations, 90 percent of the students in John Thompson’s graduate-level education courses at the University of San Diego indicated that the online learning experience was as good as or better than the traditional classroom and 91 percent would take another online course.
