The cliché that you only get one chance to make a first impression is especially true when you teach online. Each item you post—email, discussion message, announcement, etc.—must be created with much thought, and none is more important than the first post to your class.
Online instruction invariably requires more time for logistics than does face-to-face instruction due to interaction needs, extraneous cognitive load (mental effort needed to attend to non-content-related course elements), and poor self regulation by students.
Despite numerous studies that show that students prefer instant messaging to email, initiating communication with students via IM is not necessarily the best way to go, according to the editors of The Edutech Report.
Well, it’s that time again: summertime, and thus more online instructors are on the road and that means your indispensible umbilical cord to the classroom
It’s not easy to get unanimous agreement on anything these days, but on this most educators can agree:
“There is no personal interaction between student and teacher…the spontaneity of teaching is lost…the only rapport exists in exchanging bits and bytes of info.”
Perhaps you’ve heard someone make this objection to online learning? Or even uttered it yourself?
My answer to this is very simple: hogwash.
Part of being an online educator is teaching students how to conduct themselves in the online classroom. A survey of successful adult online learners provides an excellent resource for this advice.
Despite all the high-tech communication technologies available to online instructors today — discussion boards, email, IM, wikis, podcasts, blogs, vlogs, etc. — every once in awhile Dr. B. Jean Mandernach likes to use a tool that was invented way back in 1876. The telephone.
As colleges and universities continue to expand their online course offerings, increasingly they’re turning to adjuncts to teach the courses. This report features proven strategies for ensuring your distance education faculty have the necessary training and support to succeed.
In course evaluations, 90 percent of the students in John Thompson’s graduate-level education courses at the University of San Diego indicated that the online learning experience was as good as or better than the traditional classroom and 91 percent would take another online course.
