• The asynchronous format. An instructor in a face-to-face course can defuse a conflict as soon as it arises. “In an asynchronous online course, if a student says something and you don’t notice it right away but other students do, they may pounce on the student, and you can get emotions flaring and words going back and forth,” says Cristy Casado Tondeur, whose online courses in African-American history and women’s studies often generate their fair share of controversy.
• Potential misinterpretation of predominantly text-based communication. In addition to the asynchronous format, the reliance on text-based communication in most online courses opens the door to misinterpretation due to not seeing or hearing the students. When a message is only text, students may interpret its meaning based on assumptions and stereotypes, Tondeur says.
• Relative anonymity. One of the strengths of the online classroom is that it can empower students who might be uncomfortable speaking up in class to express themselves in the discussion forums. There is a downside to this relative anonymity—what LaTasha Gatling, who teaches African-American history and African history, calls “Internet thugs,” students who feel free to post whatever damaging, hurtful, or incendiary messages they care to with impunity because “they don’t know who I am.”

Controversy is inevitable and sometimes productive. The key is to know how to manage it effectively. Tondeur and Gatling offer the following techniques.

Anticipate controversy and set expectations. “In my first post, I tell students that in this course we’re going to talk about issues that they’re going to be uncomfortable with; however, it’s part of the learning process. I ask them to throw away any stereotypes they may have because stereotypes often get in the way of us opening our minds to something new. I ask them to be mindful when they are typing certain words or phrases because they can be hurtful,” Gatling says.

Icebreakers can also be an effective way to prepare students to interact productively and respectfully in the online learning environment. As an icebreaker, Tondeur asks students to post answers to the following questions: What was the best concert you’ve attended? Who would you want to interview? What is your favorite movie? Besides fulfilling a requirement, why are you taking this course?

It’s an activity that lets fellow students know something about one another. This information is also useful to Tondeur as she looks for ways to illustrate concepts that her students will find interesting and relevant. Tondeur also posts a video introduction of herself to let students know more about her and to invite students to share more about themselves.

Look for signs of conflict and unease. Some conflict is immediately recognizable in the online environment through heated discussion board posts. But not all controversial issues bring out interpersonal conflict. Sometimes thinking about controversies can elicit internal conflict and strong emotions. Instructors need to be able to recognize signs of this. These signs can include changes in the quality and quantity of posts. Long posts may indicate a student’s attempts to come to terms with a controversy. Short ones may indicate a reluctance to discuss a particularly difficult issue. Some students will contact you directly and let you know they are upset.

Be supportive. When students get upset, they may need extra support, which can be given in a variety of ways. “When I have students who reach out to me one-on-one and say they have become so upset that they cried, I let them know that this is a part of growing. As we grow, we learn things about ourselves. I engage them to find out what exactly caused them to react so strongly,” Gatling says.

These conversations can be conducted via email, but sometimes it helps to connect in more immediate ways via telephone or Skype. “One of the things I do with a student having a hard time is Skype. We can have this conversation live so it’s more personal, so they don’t feel like I’m out there somewhere in cyberspace,” Tondeur says. “Sometimes students need that extra emotional support. They need to debrief. That’s very important if you’re going to be teaching topics that are controversial. If you’re going to invite that controversy, you will have to deal with it when it comes knocking on your door. Not all instructors would be comfortable with that.”

Directly address interpersonal conflict. Interpersonal conflict can occur at any time in an online course. It can unfold within minutes or over a period of days. Left unchecked, it can hinder learning. Tondeur recommends acknowledging conflict as soon as possible. She uses an informal approach and says something like, “Wow! I see you’ve had a very good conversation over the weekend. It seems like it was pretty intense.” “If you insert that at the beginning, then they don’t think you’re blowing them off or not paying attention,” she says.

In some cases, it helps to ask students to take a break to cool off before the conflict escalates. Throughout a conflict, it’s important not to take sides, because this could alienate students. “It’s a tricky road to navigate. How can I make students understand that I understand where they’re coming from or why a person feels the ways he feels but also why that is problematic? How can I make the student feel like her voice isn’t being silenced?”

Encourage critical thinking. Controversial issues stir up strong emotions, and students often base their opinions on these feelings rather than on facts. Gatling encourages and reminds her students to come up with their own opinions based on facts versus feelings. “It can be really hard but really rewarding,” she says.

Provide a space for difficult questions. Tondeur encourages students to post difficult questions for discussion. “That’s where you see how a student is processing [the content]. They’ll ask something like, ‘How could people behave this way [referring to slavery] if they were Christians?’ And I’ll respond with something like, ‘This is a great question, but let’s remember we need to put it in its historical context. If you look at history and the way race was viewed during those times, does it help you understand how this happened?’”

Use podcasts. Tondeur uses video podcasts to respond when students express problematic views or when she wants them to pay close attention to a particular issue. The video format adds emphasis and reduces the possibility that students will misinterpret her message.

Reprinted from Online Classroom, 12.3 (2012): 2.3.

Teachers in physical classrooms understand this well and use the basic human wish for connection to instill learning through team assignments, peer review, classroom dialogue, and other methods. The online teacher faces a considerable challenge, especially when a certain percentage of students have chosen an online class, in part, because they believe they will learn more quickly without classmates who might “waste time” with too many questions and comments. These students begin the class having no desire to recognize or collaborate with other students.

Establishing the presence of co-learners is essential from the beginning. Online students may already perceive that they are in this alone and for those without online experience, the academically unsure, and those who are readily confused, this marks the first moment of learning anxiety.

Many online instructors try to create a sense of community by asking students to write a one-page bio, and then requiring them to read each others’ work. The problem with this is many students won’t bother, and those that do will likely be faced with a sea of dry facts that won’t forge any kind of human connection.

This semester, I’ve tweaked the biography assignment and the student response has been off the charts. Many students have emailed me, excited to have discovered a classmate with similar life experiences or with experiences that are exotic and inspiring. Several have let me know they are meeting to go over class work, either virtually or on campus. A number have thanked me for tricking them into discovering each other as individuals.

Before I introduce the assignment to the class, I dangle that currency that’s valued by students everywhere—bonus points. I explain that each student will write a biography, including those things that make them most interesting, but also include one simple, very believable lie. Whether truth or lie, the more specific, the better. For example, rather than telling classmates you like to garden, explain how you learned by helping your grandma with her peonies and tulips, describe the white picket fence and the smell of rich earth. A lie that’s unbelievable (“I’m a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader”) will be easy to spot—unless it’s true! This encourages students to dig deep into their own lives and pull up unusual or passionately felt experiences.

The rest is simple. After reading an entry, each student emails the author and tries to guess the lie. Guessing a lie is worth a bonus point, but if no one in the class guesses yours, it’s worth several bonus points. In my classes, 100 bonus points equals a single grade point but students will put in great effort to earn even a few bonus points. By the end of the first week, each student has communicated directly with most of the other students in the class.

This assignment has a practical side, as well. Each page-long bio offers the teacher a base-line writing sample. Since the students know their bios will be read by everyone in class, they take a little extra time to correct spelling, fix grammar, and try to make it shine. Comparing later assignments to this initial piece can provide valuable assessment opportunities, and can also help a teacher identify intentional or accidental problems with plagiarism.

Dr. Cynde Gregory teaches composition and literature at Gwinnett Technical College in Georgia in addition to tutoring second language learners of all ages.

Yet there are other equally important facets of student engagement that are often overlooked or forgotten, such as the following:

Don’t be pedantic and ostentatious in your writings to students. Academic writing can be boring, over the heads of many students, and better suited to a scholarly journal than to most online courses. But what students don’t want or need is an online instructor who appears to write down to them and does not take into account their level of vocabulary and sentence structure understanding. Sure, it’s OK to push them a bit so they can become better—in fact, this is crucial—but overall, always adjust your writing so students can easily understand all you are offering. A bonus: the more they understand, the less they need ask you for clarification.

Keep your course tied to the world beyond your school. We want students to use the knowledge we give them to better themselves beyond the course. By taking a reality-based education approach, that is, continually transitioning the course material to the students’ professional and personal worlds, the students have more of a tendency to stay involved in the course and get enthused about the material taught. Showing our subject matter at work in “the real world” is just downright exciting—it’s why we became interested in our subjects—and this will rub off on our students.

Black-and-white text can be boring. One or two pages of black-and-white text is OK, but in any online course there are pages and pages of lectures, readings, materials, syllabi, rubrics, discussion postings, and/or emails—and more—that greet students at every step of a course. When this onslaught is always black-and-white text, with no change in font, font size, and/or appearance (e.g., bold and italic) a student can quickly lose interest. But like spices add zest and interest to a soup, the addition of a bit of color and changes in the font add zest to material—it helps keep students interested and can draw their attention to especially salient portions. There’s a bonus here: it can give the impression your course is not humdrum and stale!

Always inject enthusiasm into all student communication. This is an important item that too often is taken for granted. We cannot expect students to stay engaged in a course if the instructor does not appear to be. When they come across an online instructor who exudes enthusiasm about the course, the students’ learning, the subject, online education, and the course’s importance to the outside world, students will pick up on this and will find more enjoyment in doing assignments and learning.

Keep a positive spin on assignment feedback and student correspondence. It can be so easy to merely point out errors and not give any positive feedback. One of the easiest ways we can turn off students’ engagement with our courses is to make them feel they just can’t do anything right, their questions are stupid, and future efforts would be meaningless. Two items to keep in mind: (1) We can never react to students as if they are our equal in knowledge. They are in our course to learn from us, thus patience and the impression of wanting to help them are de rigueur for us; (2) We must always include positive feedback in any assignment (no matter how poorly done) and emails to students—this gives hope, it helps with self-worth, it shows that you recognize value in the student. Any human wants this, needs this—and in the online classroom it is critical.

Use students’ introductory information to help keep them involved in the course. Pay close attention to the information students offer when they introduce themselves in week one of your course. It can give you valuable insight as to why a student may not perform well later on in the course. It also offers an opportunity for you to create a better bond with students when communicating with them. Having this information can make the difference between a student’s falling off the grid and realizing the instructor does care and is there to help out.

Pay attention to and incorporate student evaluation comments. While some student comments can be skewed against what really did occur (and may be from students who are lashing out because of poor grades received), overall these comments can remind us of what we perhaps have put on a shelf or give us suggestions for changes we had not considered. Either of these can lead to a better course, and a better course translates into more engaged students.

Give students information and resources when they don’t expect it. Our courses begin with a gaggle of material designed to inform, teach, and challenge students on their road to mastering our subject. Yet throughout the course we can augment this with articles, cartoons, videos, audio, news items, and interesting facts that all relate to our subject, an assignment, a discussion thread, etc. Doing this offers new items to keep students involved; they demonstrate your continued commitment in the course; and each can help elevate the fun, excitement, and/or interest of the students.

Use your professional and personal experiences to keep students interested. Students look up to us because we have the knowledge and facilitation abilities to help them embrace the subject matter. But we are also the students’ equals as humans, and thus sharing our stories as they relate to the course material—or perhaps an item a student shared with us—can keep students more engaged, for they are getting a look at us “behind the screen.” And when we can take the course material and transfer into its professional and/or personal importance through our own lives, that is a powerful teaching and engagement tool.

Have students become “teaching aides.” As we get students more involved in contributing to a course, they will feel more ownership of the course, which improves engagement. Asking students to contribute websites and related material they consider helpful to the course, offer ideas for discussion threads, take the lead in any group projects, expand on interesting posts they raise in a discussion, or share with the class their use of the course material in their jobs gives the class a richer texture and helps student excitement in the course stay high.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for 19 years and has a national reputation in the subject, writing and conducting workshops on distance learning, with national recognition in the field of distance education. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his second online teaching text.

Excerpted from Teaching Online with Errol: The Most Overlooked Items That Can Help Keep Online Students Engaged, Online Classroom, (February 2012): 6,7.

1. Encourage contact between students and faculty. Students need to know how to contact their online instructors and should be encouraged to communicate with us when needed. In my online courses, I identify multiple means of contacting me (email, Skype, Twitter, etc) and clearly post times when I’ll be available to chat during online office hours. While few students utilize the online office hours I provide, offering this time communicates to students that I am available if they need assistance and that I value this interaction.

2. Develop reciprocity and cooperation among students. For those of us who believe that people learn through socially constructing their understanding based on their experiences, this principle is critical. Online courses should not be independent study classes. Online instructors need to build collaborative structures into their courses to promote student-to-student interaction. In my experience, I find that students who feel isolated in an online course have difficulty being successful. In my online courses, I incorporate collaborative and interactive ventures early on. I also try to foster discussions where students communicate with one another, share ideas, and debate concepts. While interacting with the instructor is important in an online class, it is also important that students have a space where they can discuss concepts with one another as well.

3. Encourage active learning. Learning is not a passive activity. For students to learn, they must actively engage with the content in thoughtful, purposeful ways. As you develop your online course, consider ways to build active learning into the course content. This can include utilizing tools with a course management system (discussions, for instance) or other tools (GoAnimate, Animoto). But active learning isn’t limited to technological avenues in online courses. Someone teaching science online could utilize hands-on lab activities developed with common everyday items. Someone teaching psychology or sociology online could have students conduct observational work at a park or at the mall.

4. Give prompt feedback. This can be tricky, especially with instructors teaching larger online classes. While grading hundreds of papers can be overwhelming, students need to receive prompt feedback to know whether they are being successful or what they need to do to improve. If you have a few larger assignments in your class that you know will take more time to provide quality, constructive feedback, communicate this to your students. You should also include some smaller assignments that will not take as long to assess. While some experienced online instructors use the course management system to build automated responses into their courses, I believe that some students still need personalized feedback on their work that comes directly from their instructor.

5. Emphasize time on task. Learning takes time. Students and faculty working in online spaces need to realize this. Just because an online course may be more flexible schedule-wise does not mean that it won’t require a significant time commitment. It’s important for instructors to communicate expected time commitments but also be realistic with their expectations. Assigning students to read a 500 page book in a day may not be completely realistic. Have high expectations but respect students’ need to have time to interact with the content and learn.

6. Communicate high expectations. While it’s important to have high expectations for students, it is also critical that these expectations are clearly communicated to students. Likewise, it is helpful to communicate clear expectations for participation and for interaction. Do you want your students to log on daily? Do they need to submit assignments in a certain format? Is it okay for them to use emoticons in their discussion posts? These are just a few of the areas that online instructors need to consider as they develop an online course for the first time.

7. Respect diverse talents and ways of learning. Students learn in a variety of ways. While there will undoubtedly be some text-based content in an online course, it cannot be the only mode of delivery or assessment. Draw on the host of multimedia options available online to deliver content to students and to assess them. Instead of typing out some long lesson on the Middle Ages, check out YouTube or Vimeo for some available videos. Or better yet, use a screencasting tool like Jing to record a customized lesson. Instead of assigning a ten-page paper, have students create a video where they demonstrate what they’ve learned.

Dr. Oliver Dreon is the director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Millersville University. Follow him on Twitter @ollied.

Online lectures
Rothschild-Boros offers her online lectures in several formats. She creates them as PowerPoint presentations and includes narration, converts them to pdf, and uploads them into iTunes, “so [students] can take them to the beach and have no excuse for having trouble accessing the lecture.”

In addition to offering the lectures in students’ preferred formats, she includes embedded questions within each, sometimes up to 10 per lecture, that ensures that students read the material and that they think about it more deeply than they might otherwise.

Some of the questions are straightforward and are intended to demonstrate that the students have viewed the lecture and read the textbook and supplemental readings. Others are open ended and encourage students to explore how the concepts relate to them personally.

For example, in a unit on gender, student asked to read a series of articles and answer the question, Which of these articles made you look at the issue of gender differently and why? In a lecture on sex and marriage, she asks students, “Have you ever been subjected to the Romeo and Juliette question—who you can and can’t marry? Have your parents ever made and endogamous or exogamous restrictions on you? All of a sudden it applies to them. For some it’s a revelation, and because the course is online, some students are much more forthcoming than they would be in the on-campus class.”

Students submit their answers to Rothschild-Boros, and she reads them and offers feedback, including an “answer key that gives my ideal answer to the question plus a variety of answers that other students have given that I thought were excellent answers.”

Although this approach is labor intensive for the instructor, it seems to get good results. Students often say that they never thought they could do so much work and that they view the world differently as a result of thinking about these questions.

As the instructor and the one reviewing and offering feedback on students responses to these questions, Rothschild-Boros makes it a point to ask questions that will likely result in interesting answers from students to help keep her engaged in the course as well.

Discussion forums
Rothschild-Boros uses threaded discussions to get students to interact on hot-button issues. As with the embedded lecture questions, the goal with these discussion forums is to make the course more relevant and engaging.

One rule of these forums is that each student needs to make a unique contribution rather than repeating one another. For example, in a unit on modernization, she asks, What gadget or innovation would they like to eliminate if they could? Each student has to come up with a different one and explain why he or she chose it and what the invention has done to the culture. “They’re looking at the concept of modernization, and it becomes real to them on a personal level.”

Assignments
Just because a course is online does not mean that students cannot engage in real-world situations. In her cultural anthropology course, Rothschild-Boros has each student visit an ethnic market outside his or her own culture and write about the experience. “They have to stick out like a sore thumb. I tell them it’s like traveling without the jet lag and currency conversion. On the one hand it’s fun because they’re going someplace they have never been, but at the same time they have a list of things they have to explore within the market. They become field anthropologists. Every student’s paper will be different even if some of them visit the same market because they enter with different a priori knowledge, and they process what they see differently.”

Rothschild-Boros enjoys the different perspectives her students bring to her courses, and she deliberately creates assignments that bring out these differences because sharing different perspectives enhances critical thinking and also because they make the course more enjoyable for her. “My goal is to create assignments that are fun for my students and fun for me to read. It’s a win-win. The students have assignments that they find interesting and can customize and personalize to their own interests, and I get a wide variety of papers that are not all the same.”

This last point is not trivial, Rothschild-Boros says. “From the faculty perspective, you don’t want to be reading 50 answers that are all the same. The more engaged you are, the more likely you are to give feedback to your students.”

Reprinted from A Three-Pronged Approach to Improving Student Engagement, Critical Thinking, Online Classroom, (February 2012): 1, 3.

For every class, I have multiple folders on my computer:

• Current Term
• Past Terms
• Announcements
• Syllabi
• Assignments
• DQs (Discussions)
• Feedback

Within each of those folders, other folders and documents are nested. For example, each term I drag the current term folder into the past terms’ folder; it’s important to maintain records, particularly of grading and feedback. I refer to my announcements folder each time I teach a course; and, past terms’ syllabi are the foundations for each new term’s syllabi.

Within the current term folder, I have multiple folders, one for each week’s assignment. I download all of the submitted assignments each week to that folder and re-label each student’s graded paper with the grade earned in the file name. That way I have a quick and easy reference to old assignments, if needed, and a more efficient way to post grades; e.g. JohnSmith.125.

Within the DQ (discussion) folder, I have a folder for each week, and within those, a document for each DQ. I update those documents regularly, as I often write “keeper” posts during the term – i.e. replies to students in which I explain concepts that tend to give students some trouble. Each term, I actively look for opportunities to insert those “standard” replies as part of my response to students. For example, I’ll comment on a specific student’s points, and build on those (including asking questions) by including one of my standard replies in my post. If I make 15-20 posts in a DQ during the week, probably half of them include some standard text. These pre-written posts enable me to clarify concepts and stimulate critical thinking without reinventing the wheel, help me ensure that the specific learning objectives for a discussion are met, and ensure that the discussions don’t devolve into non-productive (or unrelated) tangents.

Within the feedback folder, I also have at least two folders, one for each DQ and one for assignments. Within the DQ feedback folder, I have multiple documents, including one for each DQ each week. I then have a variety of standard DQ feedback responses that are unique to the topic of that DQ and that differentiate performance based on quality and quantity criteria. Including those pre-written feedback comments as part of each student’s personalized DQ feedback saves me time and ensures that I provide the substantive feedback that is critical for learning.

The assignment feedback folder includes documents for every assignment in a course. The top of each document includes the rubric for the assignment, which I then have handy to copy/paste directly onto a student’s paper. Also included are some standard comments, some of which I insert in the body of a student’s paper when grading (to highlight a specific error/opportunity), and some of which I insert into the feedback sections of the rubric, as appropriate. These comments, like my DQ responses and feedback, continue to evolve from term to term, as I see repeated errors. I try to develop “tips” announcements for each assignment that provide guidance about these common errors so that some are reduced from term to term. I may also make modifications to assignment directions when I notice repeated errors – because if students lost points for the same reason from term to term, there’s an obvious indication that there are some opportunities for clarification on my part!

In my experience, this approach allows me to provide comprehensive, personalized feedback to each student. I can identify and note specific opportunities for improvement throughout their submission, to facilitate their learning, and to support my grading. The fact that it reduces the time it takes me to complete my grading makes it easier and more likely for me to provide the type of quality feedback and guidance that the students need.

In other words, rather than typing the same comment 20 times in a week (because 10 students made the same error multiple times in their paper) or NOT noting the error over and over again because I don’t have time to spend three hours on each paper repeating the same comment, I can highlight and make notes throughout each paper, providing detailed feedback, and I can do it efficiently. Typing something 20 times adds no additional value over pasting it in 20 times. But, not providing the comments at all, because devoting hours to grading each paper is onerous…and/or not returning papers in a timely manner because providing detailed feedback within a quick turnaround time seems impossible … both of those practices definitely decrease the learning opportunities for our students.

My goal is always maximum effectiveness with maximum efficiency. One key to being a great online instructor is increasing your efficiency in managing your workload so that you can devote more time to teaching, guiding, and interacting with your students.

Dr. Eileen F. Schiffer is a curriculum specialist in the Accelerated Online Programs/Sustainable MBA program at Marylhurst University in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Educators need to take into account the characteristics of the online classroom when trying to incorporate active learning into online courses, Beezley says. For example, the nonlinear nature of the online classroom and the lack of face-to-face interaction with its visual cues make it difficult to ensure that all learners are experiencing the course in the same manner.

“Face-to-face discussions are linear. Everyone has a shared experience. The conversation slowly builds, and hopefully by the end you’ve moved everyone from one level of understanding to a new level of understanding. In an online environment when you have students participate in a discussion through a discussion board, it’s not linear at all. There’s not necessarily a shared experience,” Beezley says.

Threaded discussion summaries
To help create shared learning experiences, Beezley has students take turns summarizing the threaded discussions. This helps create a common understanding, serves as a means of assessing students’ understanding of the content, and gives them the chance to actively engage with the course content.

Rather than posting these summaries to the discussion board, Beezley has students post them to a course wiki or to Google Docs. This increases the accessibility of the summaries, which can be important for future reference and to enable all the students to edit them in case the student who did the original summary overlooked or misinterpreted key concepts.

Beezley recommends discussing the summary (synchronously or asynchronously) with the students to assess its accuracy and prevent incorrect information from becoming ingrained in students’ minds.

Synchronous collaboration
Beezley is an advocate of synchronous sessions as a way to create active learning opportunities. She uses Wimba, a live classroom program, to facilitate synchronous collaboration, including discussions (chat and/or voice), polling, and breakout rooms in which students can work on shared documents and report back to the entire class.

Beezley prefers to have students actually talk to each other as they collaborate in the breakout rooms. As in a face-to-face classroom, the instructor can visit with each group to ensure that they are going in the right direction.

“If things are going well, I usually leave them to do what they’re doing and know that they’re going to be reporting back when we meet in the main room. I find that I can usually just be the observer because the conversations are going well. I think the trick is to try to pull them back to the main room before they get to the point where the discussion has died down. Sometimes groups may not be done discussing before you pull them all back and ask them to report on whatever they did. [You need to] establish a culture of accountability, making sure that they need to use the time wisely, or they will run out of time and won’t be able to complete the task,” Beezley says.

As in the face-to-face classroom, spontaneous off-topic conversations are likely to occur in the synchronous online environment. While too much of this can detract from the learning experience, a certain amount of it is productive. “Some of my best learning in college occurred while walking out of a classroom when the class was over and asking, ‘Did you understand this part of the lecture? It was confusing to me.’ Conversations like that are hard to have in the online environment. When you put people together in small groups, sometimes they have those kinds of conversations. I think those conversations are a good thing.”

To help facilitate these collaborations, Beezley assigns each student to a base group of students who work together throughout the course. “Instead of having one large group, I like the idea of everyone taking part in the same discussion in small groups of five students who are always working together and talking things through and reporting back to the class.”

Ready, set, go
As a graduate student, Beezley participated in synchronous sessions facilitated by her instructor Peyri Herrera, who used a technique Beezley calls “Ready, set, go” to actively engage students.

It’s a simple understanding check in which the instructor asks students to answer a question in chat and to submit their answers simultaneously on cue. The questions can be simple or complex. They can test recall or higher-order thinking. The key is to have students hit submit simultaneously so everyone’s answer is revealed at the same time.

“As a student I really feared that I would be wrong, because when it’s live there isn’t as much time to think about a response as there would be asynchronously. I think that fear is a healthy thing for students to feel. It raises your level of engagement. It makes you pay attention. It really helped me learn because whenever I was right I felt validated. But when I was wrong, I would pay attention even more.

“When you have that opportunity for the synchronous exchange of ideas, I think the stakes are higher than when it is asynchronous. When it is asynchronous, you have time to think through your responses, and I think that’s a good thing to have those times as well, but I think in that asynchronous event you have to think on your feet and apply what you know quickly. As an instructor it’s a great opportunity to really see where your students are and understand how much they’ve learned,” Beezley says.

Excerpted from Ideas for Active Online Learning, Online Classroom, (December 2011): 1, 3.

However, chances are you’ll need to make extensive changes — both to your existing PowerPoint slides, and to how you deliver them. Typically, this means scripting the lecture before narrating and recording it so that all information presented online is:

• As concise as possible
• Organized logically (no skipping around)
• Relevant to the important concepts you’re trying to convey (as opposed to spending equal time on minor points or details)
• Rich with stories, personal examples, and/or examples that clarify and amplify the important concepts
• Primarily visual (very little text presented on any screen)
• Broken down into separate 2-7 minute recordings, each based around a single concept

Unfortunately, there’s no quick and easy way to adapt face-to-face lectures for effective online presentation. Simply recording yourself narrating your PowerPoints as you would in a face-to-face classroom is ineffective because the online environment differs from the classroom in several ways:

• The time and attention students are willing to spend watching a screen is much less than the time and attention they’re willing to spend watching a live human being lecturing.
• The online environment is poor at conveying information in text form (but excels at conveying information visually).
• Online students can’t ask questions in real-time—and you won’t be able to see when they’re “getting it” so that you can diverge from your standard lecture and supplement their understanding. Therefore, your presentation has to be extremely clear and explicit.
• Online students are typically much less tolerant of extraneous or confusing information presented in a recorded lecture than they are of an in-person lecture.
• Students will be accessing lecture recordings differently—and for different reasons—than they “access” face-to-face lectures. Face-to-face students come to class, listen to lecture, and leave. Online students may use lecture recordings for previewing material, as their main source of course content, or for review. They may access recordings never, once, or multiple times for any of all of these reasons.

All of this means that you’ll need to rethink the way your existing lectures are organized, what information they contain, and how that information is conveyed.

Below are best practices for converting a PowerPoint presentation for online delivery:

• Break long lectures into five minute (or so) chunks. Studies show that online students won’t sit through hour-long lectures—so don’t create them. Instead, create a handful of smaller lecture “chunks,” each of which defines and elaborates a main concept. Chunking lectures in this way also makes it possible for online students to customize their learning by reviewing—and re-reviewing—only those concepts they’re having trouble grasping.
• Write a script for each concept. Speaking off-the-cuff may work in a classroom, but it doesn’t online. Scripting forces you to organize the presentation of your material—to make sure you don’t leave anything out or throw in anything extra. It also gives you time to think about the most effective approach to convey material in the highly visual online environment. If you decide not to write a script beforehand, be prepared to spend the same amount of time you would have spent on the script in the recording studio instead, recording and re-recording your lecture chunks (in effect, scripting your recordings during the recording process instead of beforehand.) There really is no way around the scripting step in the production of effective content optimized for online delivery; it’s “pay me now or pay me later.”
• Rework your PowerPoint slides to act as a storyboard for your script. Your PowerPoint slides should contain mostly visuals; you’ll need to reduce text to a few words per screen at most. Animations (recorded PowerPoints) are good at conveying visual information; they aren’t good at conveying text information. Any text that appears on the screen should be the “take aways” or critical notes you would expect students to take, not simply explanations or nice-to-have details.
• Time any text or images that appear on your PowerPoint slides to display at the same time that you, the narrator, speak the text or discuss the image. Studies show that presenting text causes students to try to read it—which means they’re missing whatever the narrator happens to be saying at the same time. Learning theory also suggests that displaying images and talking about them later isn’t as effective as introducing the images at the very time you begin speaking about them.

For some PowerPoint design examples, both good and bad, go here »

Emily A. Moore, M.Ed., is an instructional designer in the online learning office at Texas State Technical College – Harlingen Campus.

With startling percentages of students leaving online educational programs, the question becomes “What should an institution do to encourage, inspire, and retain students in its online educational programs?” The responses will vary; however, there is no denying the importance of the foundation course. The foundation course is a student’s first taste of online learning and therefore must provide students with a positive learning experience. To help ensure a successful first experience, I offer this baker’s dozen of recommendations.

1. Online foundation classrooms need to remain as centers of encouragement where the professor’s enthusiasm is contagious. It is critical that students experience encouragement, support, and affirmation. The foundation course professor needs to extend a deep respect for each learner and hold each learner accountable for respecting his or her peers.

2. Professors need to maintain a learner focus of support as the needs of students in the foundation course will greatly vary. An effective learner focus includes, but is not limited to, constructive recommendations for improvement, meaningful academic challenges, and consistent grading practices.

3. The responsiveness of the professor to his or her students’ needs is critical. Emails, telephone calls, and all other responses to students’ questions, needs and interests should be responded to within 24 hours. All students’ inquiries need to be welcomed and encouraged by a professor’s open door, open mind, and open heart.

4. Empathy needs to be extended to learners at all times. The empathy and understanding that professors extend to their learners needs to be based upon research with regards to topics such as adult learners, brain research, and multiple intelligences. In addition, students in foundation courses need to be provided a meaningful and relevant education based on current knowledge and skills where theory is integrated into practical applications.

5. Oftentimes our online students are not traditional, full time students. They have careers, families, and additional responsibilities that compete for their time. It is during that initial course that students are learning how to balance all of their responsibilities. Support of each student is critical.

6. Foundation course professors need to understand that adult learners have their own unique learning needs, interests, and preferences. The pedagogy for an adult learner is unique and professors in the foundation course need to individualize, differentiate, and personalize their teaching to the needs of their adult learners.

7. The foundation course professor needs to be aware of the learning curve that many students are enduring. Some students are learning how to navigate the online classroom for the first time and their experiences are often challenging, frustrating, and, at times, overwhelming. Processes, procedures and personnel to support these students need to be provided by the professor and institution.

8. The instructor’s daily presence and participation in the online classroom is critical to helping students learn, gain confidence, and feel secure in their new and sometimes foreign environment.

9. Faculty need to be mindful to always communicate in a supportive, professional, and set a positive tone. Communication pathways should include email, telephone, teleconferences, webinars, Skype, and audiovisual communications implemented within the online classroom.

10. The foundational course professor needs to demonstrate a positive, proactive, and caring disposition at all times. Humor may be implemented in a supportive manner; however, professors need to ensure that their humor is appropriate and welcomed by students. When in doubt, leave humor out.

11. The development of an online learning community is particularly beneficial to learners in foundational courses. The professor needs to clearly establish the online learning community as a place of respect. The support that students receive from their peers and professor in a learning community often results in empowerment, efficacy, and enthusiasm for learning.

12. The professor, along with each student, needs to honor and celebrate diversity of thought. The foundational course needs to be established as a “safe place” where learners feel confident and comfortable in sharing opposing views and challenging thoughts.

13. The foundational course instructor needs to work closely with advisors in support of his or her students. Confidentiality and privacy need to be maintained and students need to feel assured that their rights are protected.

The foundational course provides opportunity for students to gain confidence and competence in their online learning. It is also where they learn about the expectations and standards not only of this first course, but of their programs as a whole. It is essential that these students feel supported and encouraged.

References
Dagger, D., Wade, V. & Conlan, O., (2004), “A Framework for developing adaptive personalized eLearning”, E-Learn 2004, World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare and Higher Education, Washington, D.C.

Diaz, D. P. (2002). Online drop rates revisited. The Technology Source. Retrieved May 3, 2012, from http://technologysource.org/article/online_drop_rates_revisited/

Michael Jazzar is the founder of Educational Service & Consulting and has extensive experience teaching online.

We decided to pursue this question at our institution, Anne Arundel Community College. We asked students in 27 sections of online psychology courses to answer the following multiple-choice question: How quickly should faculty respond to any student posting (i.e., email, quiz, written assignment, etc.)?

1. 24 hours
2. 48 hours
3. 72 hours
4. One week

We also asked study participants to name three characteristics of an outstanding online teacher and explain why those characteristics are important. We received 624 responses that yielded the following results:

• Communication/availability: 66 percent
• Compassion: 58 percent
• Organization: 58 percent
• Feedback: 45 percent
• Instructor personal information: 18 percent
• Other (e.g., knowledge, technical competence, creativity): <10 percent

From these findings and the comments from participants, we identified communication/availability and feedback as the two primary characteristics that the students found important in their online courses. Students wanted frequent, timely communication and substantive feedback on their assignments. We received comments such as the following:

• “We must hear from the instructor within 24 hours!”
• “I would not think twice about withdrawing if the instructor is not available five days a week.”
• “The worst thing is waiting for a graded paper.”

It’s helpful to learn what students want from their online instructors, but we also wanted to know how these instructor characteristics affect student success, defined as course completion with the grade of an A, B, or C.

To determine the effect that outstanding online instruction can have on student success, we identified five instructors who

• responded at least three times daily to all online course emails,
• graded all papers within 48 hours of submission,
• offered specific feedback on all written work, and
• were compassionate to students’ needs.

We compared success rates in 137 online course sections within psychology, history, and sociology for a total of 2,432 students. Success rates at the college in 2008 were 66 percent for traditional courses and 59 percent for online courses. The success rate of students in online courses with outstanding instructors was 82 percent, 16 percent better than in the traditional lecture classroom and 23 percent better than online students overall.

Although not definitive, this study suggests that meeting online students’ needs significantly impacts student success and that students expect a quick response from instructors.

Despite these findings, some online instructors have rebelled rather vigorously against what we have found. They have contended that providing this level of communication and feedback coddles students, asks too much of them as instructors, and violates academic freedom (“Who are you to tell me how to teach my course?”).

We had a subsidiary study that asked faculty how quickly they thought they should be responding to students. It was kind of scary. They thought that a turnaround time of 24 to 48 hours is adequate. And despite our study that showed how a long response time affects student success, faculty resisted our recommendations. It was really disappointing, quite frankly.

Ideas for further study
These studies had some methodological flaws. Future research needs to look across disciplines, geographic regions, and demographics and should distinguish among the different types of feedback that instructors provide. For example, I know that several of our outstanding instructors simply copy and paste feedback that they anticipate they will likely provide based on their experience teaching the course. However, they also make sure that they offer personal comments about the assignments, so it’s a blend of formatted and personalized feedback.

Donald Orso and Joan Doolittle are psychology professors at Anne Arundel Community College.

Reprinted from “Instructor Characteristics That Affect Online Student Success.” Online Classroom, (October 2011): 2,7.

Last year I began sharing the following advice in an email to my students. The result has been a more open dialogue as students learn that I care about them and will help them succeed, but also that it’s going to take hard work and ultimately they’re responsible for their learning. Feel free to adapt to meet your needs and let the learning and self-esteem grow.

Dear Students:
You made the choice to get your degree and are taking classes online. Now what? It does not matter when you begin your journey, as any time you begin to reach your educational goals is the perfect time. You are looking at a long road ahead of you, and I will not lie, it will not be easy. Committing to your educational endeavor is like a lifestyle change that will take just that, a commitment, and it is a big one that will take a lot of work. However, believe me, as I am speaking from experience, when I say to you, it will be worth it!

I know you can do this and I have put my top four tips down on paper to help you get on a smart track in order to reach the finish line and walk across that stage at graduation to accept your degree.

1. Guard Against Self-Destructive Behaviors - You made the first step by applying to college, selecting a major, and getting signed up for that first class. Now, the real work begins. We all have the ability to choose our paths, to reach our goals, and build the life of our dreams. The challenge is in believing in yourself.

Next look at how your behavior, emotions, and thoughts are affecting your study habits. Are you procrastinating reading your assigned work, thinking you can just pull whatever information you need from the Internet, not starting your papers until the last minute, etc.? Examine your self-destructive behaviors. What can you do differently to be more positive and to gain the best experience out of each and every class?

2. Set Attainable Goals - What is your vision of your future? Look at next week, next month, your current class, and each class after right up to the end of your degree. Include goals for all the roles in your life. What is important in attaining those goals you have set? To make a permanent change in how you study, and balance school with the other roles in your life, you will need to set short-term goals – what is due this week? How much time do I need to set aside to complete this assignment? Then look at long-term goals, the class as a whole, and every class you need to take. Once you set your goals, continue to track them so you can see the progress you are making. Tracking your goals will keep you motivated as you check off each task you accomplish.

3. Set up a Support System - You are responsible for your own success, but we all get by with a little help from our friends and family. That is why it is important to build a healthy support system. Share your educational goals and how you are planning to accomplish them. Let others know how important this is to you to have their support. Enlist coworkers, as you never know you may find yourself a study-buddy. Do you have school-age children? Study with them. I actually spent an hour every evening with my son studying. It was a great bonding time between us, and he saw just how important learning was for the both of us. Lean on the people in your network when you feel discouraged or ready to give up due to a difficult subject, and celebrate with them when you reach your goals.

4. Ask Questions - This is your education, and you will get out of it what you put into it. Any time you find yourself struggling to figure out a specific problem, an assignment, or even just not sure what a term means, ASK. Your professors are there to help. If you do not ask, we will not know that you are struggling. We are part of your support system, and we want to see you succeed in the class just as much as you do.

Going back to school may not be easy, but with the right mindset, motivation, and support system you can do it. Believe in yourself, and your ability to learn, and you will succeed!

Dr. Dawn Kaiser is a faculty manager and teaches online fulltime for American Intercontinental University.

If you are having problems in your discussion, there’s a good chance one or more of the following suggestions will help:

Conflict in the discussion: It would be wonderful if the discussion went as planned with each student jumping in with substantive and polite comments, but that is not the real world of the online course. With such a diversity of students and with the anonymity of the online environment (although students can see one another’s names, the lack of a physical presence often gives a faux image of students being “invisible” to one another), conflicts of ideas, beliefs, insights, and suggestions can arise. Left unchecked, these can throw a discussion off track and negatively impact the course.

Solution: Each conflict presents teachable moments where we can teach the importance of debate, healthy discussion, keeping emotions in check, the value of opposing views, and how this type of conflict can be valuable by introducing ideas and approaches that others had not previously considered. The use of a general email/announcement to the class, and an active presence in the discussion can turn conflict into something positive. (If one or more students persist, do contact them individually.)

Personal attacks and bullying: These can be an escalation of conflict, the result of students’ beliefs (religious, philosophical, etc.), or a personality trait. Left alone, these students can discourage other students’ participation in discussion and could contribute to students dropping the course. It also creates a bad “vibe” in discussion.

Solution: Active intervention is important, beginning with a general posting in the discussion thread (never single students out, of course, except for positive comments). If this does not help, then the students need to be contacted individually, first via email, then with a phone call if the email is not successful. (Note: Most schools have policies in place for such situations; it is important to check with one’s supervisor to be certain of any school policy for situations like these.)

Students who do not contribute to discussion threads: Some students may feel shy about opening up in discussion. Others may be somewhat intimidated by what they view as student postings better than their own. This can result in limited discussion and discussion where minimally involved students are ignored. Again, this can lead to students becoming inactive in class or dropping the course.

Solution: For students who post minimally, be sure to pick a few of their postings as positive examples of good postings. (Always include others students: this not only balances the mix, that is, no one is singled out, but it also lets the shy student know his/her postings are as good as those of others in the class). For the absent student, individual emails and/or calls are the ticket, as much can be accomplished when the student feels you really do care—and you can also learn of any underlying problems the student may have.

Students plagiarizing other students’ postings: If left unchecked, the guilty students will continue, with more arrogance toward getting a good grade with minimal work—no good to the student for learning the course material. For those students whose work is plagiarized or who are aware of this, it can make for a very dispirited class, especially if they feel the instructor does not care. Finally, doing nothing sends the message that cheating is OK in life.

Solution: Immediately contact the offending student(s)—privately—while abiding by your school’s policy on this. This is a great opportunity for a teachable moment. Remember that students might not be aware that they are plagiarizing. Posting good materials about plagiarism at the beginning of the course with real-life examples of how plagiarism can be harmful can help to minimize any type of plagiarism in the class.

Going off track from the discussion topic: Discussion topics are set for a reason: to fortify the course learning of the primary subject. If students are allowed to digress into other areas, the purpose of a discussion topic and its learning impact will be lost.

Solution: Monitor discussion on a constant basis and when the topic goes awry, give a gentle nudge to get it back on track. You can mention the students’ zeal and excitement for being involved in discussion, but always remind all of the need to really master the topic and that each post on a discussion thread topic takes the course deeper and wider, making for a richer learning experience.

Students offering very weak, non-substantive posts: Writing “I agree” or “That’s cool!” or “Nice post” offers little. If students see others doing this on a regular basis, they may take a minimalist approach as well. The more posts like this, the thinner the impact of discussion, and some students will stay away believing not much can be learned from the discussion.

Solution: Post examples of substantive posts. Have students look at their postings as if they were receiving the information and ask: What value does this post hold? Pick up on some weak discussion postings, and show students how they can be nicely expanded into solid, meaningful posts. This will result in a balanced number of student posts and content—the perfect mix for any discussion.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 15 years and has a national reputation in the subject, both writing and conducting workshops on it. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his next book — How to Become the Perfect Online Instructor.

Excerpted from “Teaching Online With Errol: Successfully Overcoming the Major Challenges of Online Discussion.” Online Classroom, (October 2011): 6-7.

“The primary purpose of the model is to provide instructors with a guide that they can use to make intentional decisions about the design of their courses,” Jones says. In an interview with Online Classroom, Jones explained his model and its implications for online course design. We’re providing an excerpt of it here.

1. eMpowerment – Students feel empowered when they feel that they have some control over some aspects of their learning. This can involve giving students choices. “Is there some way that we can give students at least a little bit of control by giving them choices? Is there a way to give students some option to bring in something from their own lives or make some decision about a topic within that narrow assignment that lets them feel like they have some control over it?” Jones says.

Jones cites an example from an online personal health course: The instructor has students either take an online assessment or attend one or two workshops on campus related to the course’s learning objectives. This allows students the opportunity to choose their activities while still staying within the framework and goals of the course.

2. Usefulness – Students need to see that the course is useful and relevant to them within the course and beyond. In some cases it will be obvious that the skills that students will acquire in a course will directly contribute to their success in a chosen career field. In other cases, that connection will not be as clear. Jones recommends being explicit about how the skills and knowledge students acquire in the course can be applied beyond school. One way to do this is to have students interview professionals in their chosen careers about what skills and knowledge contributed to their success.

3. Success – Students need to feel that they can succeed in the course if they make a reasonable effort. The instructor can help students succeed by setting expectations, providing feedback, and facilitating the course so that students have access to additional resources if needed. “What resources do you have available for them to succeed? If you thought ahead you can know what problems students typically run into. A lot of times you can create additional documents or videos that explain the more difficult concepts,” Jones says.

4. Interest – There are two types of interest that contribute to student motivation: situational interest and individual interest. Situational interest refers to an aspect of a course that is enjoyable or fun. For example, Jones incorporates articles from Psychology Today related to the learning objectives to vary the tone and provide a different perspective from the textbook. “These are just little side readings that don’t take a lot of time and that might help students see how the [concept] might apply to the real world.”

Situational interest can be enhanced by novelty and emotions. “We as humans are attracted to things that are novel. If you have something that can engender emotion so you get people fired up about a topic or issue relates to your learning objectives that can really draw people in. We want to trigger their interest so that they pay attention enough and are interested enough while they are engaged in it,” Jones says.

Situational interest is often short lived, but it can lead to longer-term individual interest, which refers to how the content relates to the individual. For example, a student taking a course within his or her major might have a strong individual interest in the content based on how the content related to who they are and what they aspire to. A mechanical engineering major may have a strong individual interest in a mechanical engineering course because she sees herself as a mechanical engineer and thinks, “I’m interested in it because it’s who I am.”

It is possible for a student to have an individual interest in a course but not a situational interest. A student might think, for example, “I want to be a mechanical engineer, but this is boring.”

Remember that interest isn’t universal. “We assume that students think a particular subject is fascinating or that everybody’s curious about it, but that’s not the case,” Jones says.

5. Caring – Students need to feel that the instructor (and other students) care that they learn. Jones assumed that although caring is a big motivator for children, it would not play a large role in online higher education courses. He was wrong. In fact, in a study of 609 online learners, caring was the number one predictor of online instructor ratings. “It turns out that caring is very important even for adult learners,” Jones says.

Jones recommends providing regular feedback and asking students whether the feel that they’re getting the support they need.

Excerpted from Five Factors that Affect Online Learning Motivation Online Classroom, (September 2011): 1, 5.

What are some common mistakes instructors make when selecting learning technologies?

With so many technologies available to enhance online learning, it’s important to choose wisely. In an interview with Online Classroom, Tony Bates, an e-learning and distance education planning and management consultant, offered some insights on what to consider when making technology choices. We offer an excerpt of that interview here.

Bates: I think the biggest mistake is not making better use of the existing technologies that they already have available. This is not the instructor’s fault. Often we don’t train our instructors very well to use technologies. Take an obvious example like Blackboard. Faculty may get some technical training on Blackboard, but basically you need to think about what your educational purpose is for using a learning management system. If we’re not providing the kind of training about alternative models of teaching that would enable faculty to better exploit Blackboard, then the technology doesn’t get used well. It just becomes a place to dump notes and things like that.

Are there specific aspects of a course management system that you think are underutilized?

Bates: It’s not so much the technology; it’s the thinking about how it should be used. Frequently you find people using it to support classroom teaching as a place to put pdf files, lecture notes, etc. That’s not really thinking about how the students are likely to use this material. It will be much better if it’s designed for students to interact with the material—in other words, thinking about how the students will be studying rather than saying, “Here’s a convenient place for me to just repeat what I did in the lecture.” If it’s going to be used by students independently, what kind of support will learners need when using that material? What kind of activities could they be doing?

What do you say to instructors who select technology because it’s new or because a colleague has had success with it?

Bates: I call this technological determinism. Because something is new doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better as a teaching tool. I think a lot of people make that mistake: because it’s new and other people are using it, I should be using it. It always comes back to thinking about what the educational purpose of using a tool is and what added advantages it gives. In most cases you have to spend more time learning to use the tool. You have to do something different from what you’re already doing, and so just jumping into new tools is really a distraction from your overall teaching.

This comes back to training and thinking about how students learn and what affordance that technology provides. What does it allow you to do that you couldn’t do before? Is it better than what you were doing before? Are the students learning new skills that they couldn’t learn before? Are they able to apply what they have been learning? Will this lead to better learning on the part of the students or more convenience for the students? So it’s looking at what kind of job this tool does. In particular, can it replace something else you’re already doing? Otherwise, you’re just adding more work for yourself and your students. It’s really important to think about what benefit you might get by using that technology—over and above what you’re already doing.

What factors should be considered when selecting technology?

Bates: I use the SECTIONS model. It’s an acronym: Students, Ease of use, Cost, Teaching, Interaction, Organizational issues, Novelty, Speed, and Security. It’s a complex decision-making process. There are so many tools out there. We really need to be more sophisticated with our use of technology than we’ve been. That means thinking about a lot of factors when making that choice. How will this technology benefit the students? Does it make learning more accessible for the students? Does it increase their flexibility? What kind of students are you reaching—or, more importantly, could you reach who you’re not reaching already—with this technology? I don’t believe there’s any intrinsic value in using a technology just because it’s a technology.

Are there certain considerations when making future redesign/enhancements easier?

Bates: I think the key issue here is that if you don’t have a systematic, comprehensive training program for faculty, then working in a team is critical if you’re going to use technology well. That’s the way you keep your workload manageable as an instructor. If you try to do everything on your own, your workload is going to go through the roof. Most successful technology-based courses usually involve working with instructional design and Web specialists who can do Web design, video editing, and so on. Also make sure that you’re not doing the stuff that the Web designer can do much faster than you can.

Excerpted from Selecting Online Learning Technologies: An Interview with Tony Bates Online Classroom, (September 2011): 2-3.

But what is the best way to use these resources? When and where in the course should they be posted? The more we are aware of how best to present resources in our classes, the more effective those resources will be. Use these suggestions, and you’ll soon find your students embracing the resources and becoming more involved in the classroom:

Use resources to engage students. Students expect your course to have assigned readings, links to school sites that offer resources, and already-posted information that focuses on the subject. These items are standard, and thus your excitement and enthusiasm for them may be limited. Yet when students interact with resources of your choosing, they will recognize your deep interest in the course, your efforts to assist them in their learning, and the sincerity of your teaching throughout the course. This approach will always result in more engaged students.

Make sure the resources match your students’ needs, levels, and abilities. It won’t do your students much good if the resources you select for them are beyond their level of understanding, do not fit the needs of the course, or are not of immediate use. Choose what you post for your students with the students in mind, never with you in mind. And while you may know that resource X or Y will be of great use to the students “down the road” (i.e., in another course or in a job), remember that the students are currently in your course, and thus are looking for something that can help now rather than later.

Begin the course with some extra resources. When the students are greeted by extra resources of your choosing—and you post an announcement or email that expresses your enthusiasm about these—you have given them a nice “extra.” It’s akin to a welcome bag of goodies given by a local Chamber of Commerce to a tourist. Since you have selected these resources, it allows the course to start off in the direction you’d like—and be sure these initial resources are plum ones that fit the subject matter and the first assignment(s) of the course. This is a nice way to immediately establish you as someone who really wants to help the students learn!

Post additional resources throughout the weeks of the course. That first shot of resources you’ve selected is great—but post only those resources and they may be quickly forgotten. By having resources continually pop up throughout the course just as they greeted students on day one, you keep alive that spirit of going the extra mile.

Always ask students to contribute resources. Why should you have all the fun? Students enjoy being part of the learning process, and one way they can help you, the class, and themselves is by contributing resources that relate to the subject and/or specific assignments. An extremely effective option is to use a discussion thread; ask each student to submit three websites that relate to some aspect of the course. Students will get excited about this and will share their findings with one another, and you will get additional resources for future courses.

Continually collect and update your resources. The more resources you have, the better variety you can offer your classes, so when you collect something for each class—on your own and from student submissions—save it in one or more files on your computer for easy access. Of course, make certain all resources are up to date; will help teach, underscore, or enlighten some aspect of your course; and fall within the umbrella of any policy your school may have on posting “rogue” resources.

Excerpted from Teaching Online With Errol: The How, Why, and When of Posting Resources in the Online Classroom, Online Classroom, (June 2011): 6.

“What I’d like to do is change this to a more proactive approach,” said Jill Schiefelbein, who teaches online at Arizona State University. “For example if you’re giving an assignment and you know that in the past students have had difficulty with certain aspects of the assignment you can preempt that with a voice announcement that says ‘In the past students have had trouble with the assignment in this way…”

Highlighting potential pitfalls and offering the resources for overcoming them is just one of the ways Schiefelbein ensures a continuous feedback loop throughout her courses. During the recent online video seminar Engage Online Students with Targeted Feedback, Schiefelbein demonstrated a variety of strategies and methods faculty can use to collect, harness and disseminate feedback.

Four times each term Schiefelbein sends out an email to each student that outlining the possible points available and earned to date. Within that email is a list of resources, such as the tutoring center or writing center. She then encourages a little reciprocal feedback by asking students for feedback on the course. She’ll ask questions such as: ‘What was your favorite part of the course so far?’ or ‘What have you found most challenging?’ and then takes that feedback to make improvements throughout the remainder of the course.

In addition to the quarterly check-ins, Schiefelbein also sets up an area where informal conversations can take place. These “hallway conversations” are intended to mimic what students in a face-to-face class might talk about with each other before and after class. When important topics come up in the hallway conversations, Schiefelbein will mention them in a text or voice announcement. “I’ll post an announcement that says, ‘Check out the hallway conversation area and chime in on the discussion about …’ and I’ll give the subject line of whatever discussion is relevant. A more organic type of feedback emerges.”

An effective feedback loop also means communicating with students across multiple channels — discussion boards, email, audio and video — and Schiefelbein recommended a number of tools for accomplishing this task if the course’s learning management system (LMS) doesn’t have the functionality already built-in, including: VoiceThread, which supports text, audio and video, Audacity, AudioPal and Voxopop.

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 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.