Posts Tagged ‘teaching online courses’
August 17 - Ensuring Online Course Quality Requires Constant Vigilance
By: Jennifer Garrett in Distance Learning Administration
Online programs are under a microscope. Some school faculty and administrators are concerned with maintaining academic quality, while others have already identified problems with quality and integrity. Negative media exposure has caused accreditors and other stakeholders to scrutinize online learning, and college and university administrators know that they need to respond.
August 10 - Using Synchronous Tools to Build Community in the Asynchronous Online Classroom
By: Michelle Kosalka in Asynchronous Learning and Trends
Sometimes students in the online environment just need that extra nudge to feel connected in order to truly excel. As instructors, we can facilitate community-building in an asynchronous environment by utilizing synchronous tools, such as Wimba, Skype, Elluminate, and others available to us via our learning management system or outside of the LMS.
August 9 - Get Your Online Course Off to a Good Start
By: Susan Biro, EdD in Online Education
The beginning of an online course is a critical time in which the instructor establishes expectations, sets the tone, and helps students navigate the course. Here are some points to consider for the time leading up to and including that first week:
July 29 - The Underbelly of Online Teaching
By: Errol Craig Sull in Online Education
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.
June 23 - I’m Teaching Online Next Term: What Do I Have to Know?
By: Mary Bart in 20 Minute Mentor, Teaching Online
I’m Teaching Online Next Term: What Do I Have to Know? Program includes a CD with the video presentation, plus supplemental materials, PowerPoint slides, and complete transcript • $99 New online instructors tend to face the virtual classroom with conflicting feelings of excitement and fear. While embracing the benefits of online learning, they also have
April 25 - Creating a Sense of Time in Online Courses
By: Todd Conaway in Online Education
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?
April 4 - Measuring Educational Experience Using the Community of Inquiry Framework
By: Mary Bart in Online Education
End-of-course evaluations, conducted properly, can serve as valuable tools for improving online programs, but they’re not without their drawbacks.
“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.”
March 14 - Fostering Student Interaction in the Online Classroom
By: Mary Bart in Online Education
When you first start teaching online, there’s the temptation to put on your Superman cape and try be ultra responsive and ever-present. So intent on ensuring that each and every student has a successful learning experience in your class, you answer student emails at any hour of the day or night, respond to every discussion board post, and design elaborate assignments that take advantage of all the latest technology tools available.
February 14 - Perspectives in Understanding Online Teaching and Learning Strategies for First-Year Generation Y Students
By: Loren Kleinman in Online Education
There is an overwhelming amount of literature that addresses strategies to develop and facilitate teaching and learning in the online classroom as a way to engage and retain first-year students. Students and faculty in the online classroom are faced with a unique situation: classes without a physical classroom. Professors are also faced with a unique situation: creating a unified class that is engaged and well informed on the structure of the course in order to create a total learning environment (Quitadamo and Brown 2001).
February 11 - Five Critical Competencies for Teaching Online
By: Christopher Hill in Online Education
Distance Education Report asked Larry Ragan, Director of Faculty Development for Penn State’s World Campus, “How would you rank the critical competencies for teaching online?” Here’s what he said:
