Faculty Focus

A FREE PUBLICATION FROM THE CREATORS OF THE TEACHING PROFESSOR

threaded discussions

Tips for Managing Large Online Classes

The following tips from Susan Ko, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Maryland University College, will help you maintain course quality and interaction in large online courses:

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Tips for Establishing a Rapport with Online Students

“There is no personal interaction between student and teacher…the spontaneity of teaching is lost…the only rapport exists in exchanging bits and bytes of info.”

Perhaps you’ve heard someone make this objection to online learning? Or even uttered it yourself?

My answer to this is very simple: hogwash.

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Online Students Share Tips for Success

Part of being an online educator is teaching students how to conduct themselves in the online classroom. A survey of successful adult online learners provides an excellent resource for this advice.

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Promoting Early, Active Discussion in Online Courses

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.

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Using Video Clips to Stimulate Discussion in Online Courses

If you’re looking to improve threaded discussions in your online courses, consider using brief video clips as discussion prompts. When carefully selected and integrated into a course, these clips can lead students to higher-order thinking and appeal to auditory and visual learning styles.

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