Faculty Focus

A FREE PUBLICATION FROM THE CREATORS OF THE TEACHING PROFESSOR

Three Ways to Efficiently and Effectively Support Online Learners

Trying to support students in an online course can create an unsustainable burden on the instructor. “I’ve heard faculty members say things such as, ‘When I first started teaching online, I drowned in my course. I was making myself available 24 hours/seven days a week. If a student posted, I felt I had to reply immediately. They were counting on me regardless of time of day,’” says Dr. Laurie Grosik, assistant professor in the master in health science program at Saint Francis University. In an interview with Online Classroom, she suggested ways to support online students without creating an undue burden on the instructor.

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Scenario-Based Learning in the Online Classroom

Scenario-based learning can be an effective way for students to apply what they have learned to realistic situations. There are many different ways to design scenarios for online delivery, from text-based case studies to interactive, immersive simulations. Regardless of the resources that you have available, there are effective ways to put students in scenarios that contribute to their learning.

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Managing Student Complaints

Knowing how to handle student complaints is an essential skill for department chairs. In an interview with Academic Leader, Patricia Markunas, chair of the psychology department at Salem State University, offered advice on minimizing the number of complaints and managing those that do make it to the department chair.

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Meet Students Where They Are

Valerie Powell, assistant professor of art at Sam Houston State University, decided to supplement her face-to-face courses to extend the classroom and provide opportunities for students who are not comfortable speaking up in the face-to-face environment. Rather than demanding that students interact using a specific tools, she offers options “to meet students where they are.”

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From F2F to Online: Getting It Right

Successfully transferring a face-to-face course to the online learning environment requires careful preparations that take into account differences between these two modalities.

“If you simply take your face-to-face class and put it online and teach it electronically, you will fail miserably,” says Paul S. Caron, director of education at Lewiston-Auburn College, whose first experience teaching online taught him some valuable lessons about how to provide students with an effective, supportive, and motivating learning experience.

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Where Does Innovative Teaching Come From?

There’s a long-standing tradition of informal sharing of pedagogical innovation among K-12 teachers and a whole line of research on this phenomenon, which is known as teacher leadership. The same type of informal faculty leadership exists in higher education as well, but there is very little research on this topic, according to Pete Turner, education faculty member and director of the Teacher Education Institute at Estrella Mountain Community College.

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Motivating Adult Online Learners

When Sheri Litt became dean of arts and sciences at Florida State College’s Open Campus, one of her priorities was to address the issue of online learner satisfaction and success. “We started looking at the data,” Litt says. “We looked at students’ comments on surveys to find out what they were disappointed with in their online courses. And a lot of comments [said, in essence,] ‘I felt my instructor didn’t care’ or ‘I felt my instructor would just log in once every six weeks’ or ‘It would take an entire semester for the instructor to grade an assignment, and [he or she] didn’t really give me any feedback so I could develop my skills.’” Based on this qualitative approach, Litt and her colleagues developed a set of best practices that have improved student motivation, satisfaction, and success.

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Appreciative Inquiry: A Way to Guide Positive Change in Your Department

When faced with a problem or challenge within your unit, your first inclination might be to immediately look for solutions. Makes sense, right? But when the problem or challenge comes from an individual or the way individuals interact—which is often the case—those who feel they are being viewed as problems to be solved might not appreciate being labeled as such. A better approach is a practice known as appreciative inquiry, which builds on strengths and what is working well to bring about positive change.

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Six Tips for Preparing Your Online Course

Careful preparation is essential to the success of an online course “to provide a positive experience for the students and to be able to maximize your time with students so that you’re not spending time on reworking things that weren’t clear up front,” says Ann Millacci, associate professor of education at the University of Cincinnati. In an interview with Online Classroom, she offered the following advice on preparing your course for your learners:

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