Applying the Seven Principles for Good Practice to the Online Classroom

Almost 25 years have passed since Chickering and Gamson offered seven principles for good instructional practices in undergraduate education. While the state of undergraduate education has evolved to some degree over that time, I think the seven principles still have a place in today’s collegiate classroom. Originally written to communicate best practices for face-to-face instruction, the principles translate well to the online classroom and can help to provide guidance for those of us designing courses to be taught online.

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App Review: Doceri Combines Screencasting, Desktop Control, and Interactive Whiteboard

The Doceri interactive whiteboard and screencast recorder app, like the Splashtop app I reviewed earlier, is useful to anyone wishing to remotely control a projected image from a connected computer, make screen annotations on what is displayed (you can make the annotations on a displayed image or a whiteboard), and send your creation for others to see. The thing I liked the most about using Doceri is the ease with which recorded audio and screen annotations can be made and the ability to send/post the finished product to a LMS or similar system for students to access. This app can save you the expense associated with costly classroom whiteboards and the controls in the app are easy to navigate.

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Student Presentations: Do They Benefit Those Who Listen?

Almost everyone agrees that student presentations benefit the presenter in significant ways. By doing presentations, students learn how to speak in front a group, a broadly applicable professional skill. They learn how to prepare material for public presentation, and practice (especially with feedback) improves their speaking skills. But those of us who have students do presentations in class know there’s a downside—and that’s how the rest of the class responds to these presentations. When the teacher talks, students more or less have to pay attention, at least some of the time, but when their classmates present, they can be comatose. Not only does this make it more difficult for the presenter, it means the students listening are not likely having any sort of learning experience.

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NetClick Makes Classroom Interaction Easy

With the use of mobile devices such as tablets, smartphones and laptops transforming the 21st century classroom, teachers and professors around the world are looking to streamline and revolutionize the way they present content and interact with students. To meet this demand for Education 2.0, Waterloo technology startup NetClick today announced the release of its new Cloud-based solution that helps educators transform their lessons and lectures into engaging, interactive classroom experiences in seconds and with use of existing class infrastructure. It is a unique, patent pending service, not available in any other Classroom Response System.

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Peer-led Reading Groups Boost Engagement and Retention

A legal historian by training, I have taught many general education courses that draw students from across majors and disciplines. It is not uncommon for the 21st century college student to become somewhat disengaged with the works of Plato or Kant, and this is especially the case when these readings are complex and/or students are outside their topical comfort zones. As a result, in-class discussion suffers, momentum and dialogue are hindered, and students may feel alienated from the course. This is exacerbated by varying levels of engagement with out-of-class readings, producing uneven student learning outcomes.

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A Three-Pronged Approach to Improving Online Student Engagement, Critical Thinking

Monica Rothschild-Boros, an art appreciation and cultural anthropology instructor at Orange Coast College, uses a combination of embedded lecture questions, threaded discussion, and innovative assignments to engage students and get them to think critically in her online courses.

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Should You Be Using Rubrics?

Use of rubrics in higher education is comparatively recent. These grading aids that communicate “expectations for an assignment by listing the criteria or what counts, and describing levels of quality from excellent to poor” (p. 435) are being used to assess a variety of assignments such as literature reviews, reflective writings, bibliographies, oral presentations, critical thinking, portfolios, and projects. They are also being used across a range of disciplines, but so far the number of faculty using them remains small.

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McGraw-Hill Education Joins Forces with Magna Publications to Launch the McGraw-Hill Learning Institute

To help educators respond effectively to these challenges, McGraw-Hill Education today announced the launch of McGraw-Hill Learning Institute, a professional development program created to keep institutions and instructors up-to-date on the latest education technologies and provide guidance in determining which emerging technologies and best practices are right for their needs. As part of the McGraw-Hill Learning Institute launch, McGraw-Hill Education and Magna Publications today announced a new agreement to jointly develop and offer professional development products and services to educators and institutions.

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Using the E-Portfolio to Validate Student Learning

Too often our students consider their work in the classroom as required assignments—not work that has anything to do with what they will be doing in the real world. Oh, maybe they are picking up some skills they might use in their future employment, but that’s about it. As teachers, how do we get students to understand that the work they do in our classes—such as team projects, community service, technical papers, and even research—is relevant to what they will be doing after they graduate? How do we encourage them to keep their materials and use them to validate their work as students? I think I have an answer. Teaching an e-portfolio capstone course for several years has given me a perspective that I believe should be the framework for validating student learning outcomes across all institutions of higher education.

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