This article is featured in the resource guide, Effective Online Teaching Strategies. “One good conversation can shift the direction of change forever” – Linda Lambert
When hundreds of spring and summer undergraduate courses were abruptly moved from onsite to online delivery in the wake of COVID-19, several faculty and students
This article is featured in the resource guide, Effective Online Teaching Strategies. Due to the pandemic, both instructors and students have had to adapt quickly
Last spring, my college, like so many other schools, made a dramatic mid-semester pivot from face-to-face instruction to online classes. It was trial by fire
This article is featured in the resource guide, Effective Online Teaching Strategies. Today, faculty are being asked to abruptly expand their teaching practices in ways
Heidi Beezley, instructional technologist at Georgia Perimeter College, strives to instill online courses with active learning, “providing opportunities for students to meaningfully talk and listen,
When people find out I am an online art history instructor, the most common reaction I get is “How does that work?” Most of the time, people assume that because art is such a visual outlet that somehow the online classroom is not the most appropriate place to teach art. I have to admit, when I was first approached about teaching art history online, I was skeptical as well. But as time and terms wear on, so too does my belief that teaching art asynchronously can be an effective, and dare I say it, better way to teach art history. Here’s why.
Sometimes students in the online environment just need that extra nudge to feel connected in order to truly excel. As instructors, we can facilitate community-building in an asynchronous environment by utilizing synchronous tools, such as Wimba, Skype, Elluminate, and others available to us via our learning management system or outside of the LMS.
Learning research indicates that people learn better in the presence of some emotional connection—to the content or to other people. Creating this emotional connection is particularly challenging in the online classroom, where most communication is asynchronous and lacks many of the emotional cues of the face-to-face environment. Nevertheless, it is possible to do, with a learner-centered approach to teaching and a mastery of the technology that supports it, says Rick Van Sant, associate professor of education at Ferris State University.
When designing an online course we tend to create the course based on our needs and time restraints, and often do not think of our students and the reasons why they are taking an online course. To effectively meet our students diverse needs, we must step back and ask ourselves:
