Page 202 – Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

Online Homework Systems Can Boost Student Achievement

Post author:Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Post published:January 22, 2013
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Online homework has great appeal for instructors, especially those teaching large courses. By using online assignments, instructors don’t have to collect, grade, and promptly return large quantities of homework assignments. Online programs provide instructors with feedback on student performance that can be used to modify the presentation of material in class. Online homework is also beneficial to students. They get feedback promptly, even more promptly than that provided by very conscientious instructors. Online homework can also be designed so that it allows students to work on areas that frequently cause trouble and/or on areas where the individual student is having difficulty.

Promoting Student Success Through Collaboration

Post author:Oliver Dreon, PhD
Post published:January 21, 2013
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Last week, a student named Mary visited me during my office hours and presented me with an interesting dilemma. In one of her classes, a professor had distributed a study guide with a series of questions to help the students prepare for an upcoming exam. Mary, being the millennial student that she is, decided to upload the study guide into Google Docs and invite the rest of the class to contribute to the document. Students answered the study guide questions from each of their individual notes and then refined the answers from their peers.

The Assessment Movement: Revisiting Faculty Resistance

Post author:Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Post published:January 18, 2013
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“We ought to be up to the task of figuring out what it is that our students know by the end of four years at college that they did not know at the beginning.” That’s how Stanley Katz begins a well-written essay that explores the assessment movement in higher education.

Managing High-Enrollment Online Courses

Post author:Rob Kelly
Post published:January 15, 2013
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Online instructors are being asked to accommodate an increasing number of students in their courses. The challenge is to manage the workload associated with these high-enrollment courses. Susan Fein, eLearning consultant/instructional designer at Washington State University, offered some advice on how to do this.

Nine Characteristics of a Great Teacher

Post author:Maria Orlando EdD
Post published:January 14, 2013

Years ago, as a young, eager student, I would have told you that a great teacher was someone who provided classroom entertainment and gave very little homework. Needless to say, after many years of K-12 administrative experience and giving hundreds of teacher evaluations, my perspective has changed. My current position as a professor in higher education gives me the opportunity to share what I have learned with current and future school leaders, and allows for some lively discussions among my graduate students in terms of what it means to be a great teacher.

Students Place a Premium on Faculty Who Show They Care

Post author:Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Post published:January 11, 2013
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Most teachers know that caring for students is important, but do they realize just how important? A recent article by Steven A. Meyers offers a succinct, well-referenced, and persuasive review of research that addresses the topic. It begins with what most teachers already know: Caring is regularly identified as one of the ingredients or components of effective instruction. What many teachers do not know is that students value the dimensions of caring more highly than teachers do.

eInstruction Introduces Wave: A Web-based Assessment Solution

Post author:Company News
Post published:January 10, 2013

eInstruction expands its line of products with the release of Wave, a centralized, online solution for higher education. Wave extends the functionality of an institution’s learning management system (LMS) by facilitating summative and formative assessment with the use of student response devices such as clickers, smartphones, laptops, and tablets.

New Study: More than 6.7 Million Students Learning Online, Most Institutions Undecided about MOOCs

Post author:Mary Bart
Post published:January 8, 2013
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The 2012 Survey of Online Learning conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group reveals the number of students taking at least one online course has surpassed 6.7 million. Higher education adoption of Massive Open Online Courses remains low, with most institutions still on the sidelines.

Adapting PowerPoint Lectures for Online Delivery: Best Practices

Post author:Emily A. Moore, MEd
Post published:January 7, 2013
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If you use PowerPoint lectures in your face-to-face classes, you can use those same lectures as jumping-off points for creating narrated animations for your online students to watch. That’s the good news. 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:

Detailed Instructions for Using PickMeBuzzer on Apple iOS Devices

Post author:Dave Yearwood, PhD
Post published:January 4, 2013

Back in July I reviewed PickMeBuzzer and concluded that, while the app has a lot of potential, it needs some work to make it more intuitive and stable. Well, after working with the PickMeBuzzer app designer, I can tell you that I am now very pleased with the app and have in fact used it a couple times in my class with great success. Here are step-by-step instructions for using it with a Jeopardy-like class activity.