By: Kelly Price, PhD, and Julia Price, EdD
When students enroll in online classes, they are often wary and a bit intimidated by the experience. There are a multitude of concerns such as assignment quality/rigor, technology and the course management system, course design, the expected workload, and their…
In the face-to-face classroom, each faculty member typically designs and teaches their own course with minimal input from departmental colleagues. Reflective of this approach, many colleges and universities have adopted similar models for their online program in which each faculty…
Prior to every course, faculty should consider how they can connect with their students. Building rapport with students must be intentional and consistent (Glazier, 2016). Merely copying and pasting the course content into a learning management system cannot be the…
Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with approximately 300 faculty who have developed and taught their first online course. One of the concerns I frequently hear from instructors considering teaching online is that they will lose the…
By: Stephanie Smith Budhai, PhD
Participating in team projects offers students the chance to develop interpersonal communication skills (Figueira & Leal, 2013), build relationships with classmates, and increase the level of collective competencies as each group member brings something different to the group. However, in…
Another Tax Day is upon us. I’ll keep this post brief, just in case you haven’t yet filed.
The Internal Revenue Service is good for lots of things, but it’s not usually viewed as a source of sound teaching advice. In 2016, however, the government agency created an online publication called the Behavioral Insights Toolkit. At just 72 pages, the toolkit is a relatively short guide for IRS employees and researchers to help promote compliance and improve taxpayer engagement by leveraging strong communication practices.
By: Wren Mills, PhD
Due to the shift to performance-based funding in many states, colleges and universities have sharpened their focus on student retention. Because of this, I have sought out information about best practices in retaining students, in particular online students, to help do my fair share in this effort for the schools where I teach. While I found many articles about the importance of social presence, one of the more interesting discoveries was from a chapter in Trust in Organizations on the concept called “swift trust.” Although it is mostly put into practice and studied in workplace settings, it certainly applies to education, too.
By: Cassandra Sardo and Anthony Sindelar
Where did it all go wrong? Professor Elavor* just wrapped up what she hoped would be a successful semester of her new online course—Introduction to Natural Sciences. Unfortunately, the course ended with a giant thud.
By: Stefan A. Perun, PhD, and Edward A. Liva
Courses with a great deal of technical content for application in practice such as law, business, or STEM courses are oftentimes designed in what amounts to an information delivery method. The professor provides the necessary information for students to memorize and repeat back in the course assessments.
By: Karen Costa
It’s the night before a major assignment is due and you sit down to post an announcement in your online course. You want to remind your students of the impending due date, and oh yes, there’s a great webinar offered by the career center coming up on Tuesday. That reminds you, there’s also that article about the history of Wikipedia that you want to share with them too. Come to think of it, now’s as good a time as any to discuss the lack of analysis you noticed in their discussion board posts last week. As you write about their discussions, you also decide to include one last link to a citation website you hope will help them improve in this area.