“What are we supposed to be doing?” (said every student at least once in a breakout room). Small groupwork enables students to “compare their current understandings with those of…
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 for instructors and students…
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In Course Design, Online Education
The Emergency Campaign: Discord, D&D, and Distance Learning
June 29, 2020 Kristen Bailey, Thomas Bullington, and Luke MacIver
Dr_Tom 🎲 Dungeon Master (DM): Not every DM plays the villain. That’s not my style. I prefer to hover the party, telling the story, urging the student-adventurers onward. One…
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In Effective Teaching Strategies, Online Education
Helping Students Develop Digital Content Curation Skills
June 26, 2020 Brad Garner, PhD
In our 24/7, always-connected world where we are inundated with information from all sides, the ability to identify quality resources to inform our research and actions has become a…
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Using Social Media to Retain and Connect with Students in the Shift to Online Education
June 24, 2020 Abdullah Al-Bahrani, PhD, and Rebecca Moryl, PhD
COVID-19 has upended normal social connections that develop between students and professors. We are missing the connections that develop through casual interactions in office hours, pre-class discussions, post-class questions,…
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Fostering Fun: Engaging Students with Asynchronous Online Learning
June 17, 2020 Lisa K. Forbes, PhD
Today, faculty are being asked to abruptly expand their teaching practices in ways many of us would never have imagined. For many, teaching online is something they’ve never done…
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In Course Design, Online Education
Teaching with Unknowns: Finding Meaning in Your Online Course Delivery
June 8, 2020 Miriam Bowers-Abbott
While there is no shortage of data about COVID-19, finding meaning within that data has been another matter entirely. Meaning would be especially helpful for faculty who are trying…
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In Online Education, Teaching and Learning
How Students Re-Imagined the Teach-Learning Environment and Visualized a Virtual Event
June 3, 2020 Bonnie Bechard, EdD
For the past three years, I have taught a social entrepreneurship course with a semester-long project called Climb Above Addiction. This social venture supports prevention and recovery from drug…
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Instructors, and instructional designers, spend a lot of time thinking about the flow of a classroom and how to create an intuitive sensibility that paves the progression a student…
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In Effective Teaching Strategies, Online Education
Six Practical Approaches for Teaching Writing Online
May 22, 2020 Christian Aguiar and Albert Pearsall, III
This spring, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many to make a sudden transition to online teaching, a field with its own rich body of research, best practices, and good ideas.…
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An Educational Shift: Encouraging Mission-Driven Online Learning
May 20, 2020 Gwen Bass, PhD, and Michael Lawrence-Riddell
Over the past decade, many independent schools have intentionally expanded their missions to go beyond academic excellence and include goals related to character development, equity, accessibility, and social responsibility.…
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In Online Education, Philosophy of Teaching
Like the Phoenix: Finding New Life in an Online Course
May 18, 2020 Mary Hoeft
It was Friday, March 12, 2020—the end of a long week of “What Ifs.” What if Covid-19 spreads across the U.S.? What if our university closes? What if our…
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While it might seem like a different lifetime, it was not so long ago that our world was turned upside down by the emergence of COVID-19 and the onslaught…
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Because I teach online courses, I hoped—foolishly—that my own students would not suffer too much from the destabilizing effects of COVID-19 on higher education. I knew them to be well-versed…
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A Reflection on the Sudden Transition: Ideas to Make Your Synchronous Online Classes More Fun
April 29, 2020 Siva priya Santhanam, PhD
The transition to online teaching has been partially, if not completely, challenging for faculty teaching in colleges and universities. I am writing this article while reflecting on my own…
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As a teacher of writing and mindfulness, I often use cross-genre approaches in my classrooms. For my writing classrooms, that might mean simple breath work, meditation, or movements to…
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When I was asked to create an online course 20 years ago, I simply transcribed my face-to-face lectures into 10–15 page Word documents that I posted in our LMS.…
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How Superheroes Can Bring Your Online Discussion Board to Life
April 10, 2020 David Noffs and Jacob Guerra-Martinez
Editor’s note: This article was featured on The Teaching Professor in December 2018. For more articles like this, learn more about a Teaching Professor membership. Late last summer we…
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Here I sit in my new, make-shift home office moving my face-to-face courses online with a view of my backyard. For the last few days I have contemplated many…
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When the Tide Goes Out: Identifying and Supporting Struggling Students in Online Courses
March 30, 2020 Marie A. Revak, PhD
Students in online courses start with the best intentions—keeping up with the readings and assignments, engaging in discussion, and learning from their instructor’s feedback and comments. Once an online…
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As schools across the nation announce they are switching to online instruction in an attempt to slow the rapidly evolving coronavirus pandemic, teachers everywhere are scrambling to convert their…
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In Online Education, Philosophy of Teaching
Leading Our Classes Through Times of Crisis with Engagement and PEACE
March 25, 2020 Donald A. Saucier, PhD, and Tucker L. Jones, MS
The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has caused a fast and radical shift across colleges and universities to remote and online teaching models. As such, our face-to-face courses have been taken…
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As universities rush to get all their courses online quickly, there’s a high probability of error but also a lot you can do to succeed. Problems may occur due…
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Five Ways to Promote Student Autonomy in Online Discussions
March 16, 2020 Cassandra Sardo and Justin York, PhD
“Write an initial post and then reply to two of your classmates.” These are the standard requirements for students participating in online course discussions. Discussions in an online course…
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In Effective Classroom Management, Online Education
Designing for Accessibility: How to Front-Load Your Digital Content with UDL Principles
March 4, 2020 Caran Howard, PhD
Accessibility is a big deal. We include statements about accessibility in our syllabi and on our institutional websites. We also need to ensure that we comply with the Rehabilitation…
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Promoting Online Learners’ Social-Emotional Growth: A Montessori Perspective
March 2, 2020 Catherine R. Barber, PhD
When I first began creating and teaching online higher education courses, I searched scholarly journals, instructional design resources, and quality standards for insights and guidance. Although I followed best…
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The ubiquity of online meeting software has made it increasingly easy for professors to include live online class sessions to both brick-and-mortar and online courses. I have learned in…
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A Discussion About Online Discussion
February 3, 2020 Amanda Page and Miriam Abbott
When it comes to facilitating online classroom engagement, discussion boards are a great go-to. They’re practically omnipresent; a tool used in every virtual classroom in every college curriculum. Ideally,…
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Organic Online Discussions: Saving Time and Increasing Engagement
January 27, 2020 Beth René Roepnack, PhD
I used to dread online discussions as much as many students do. However, after implementing a simple change, I was as eager to join my online discussions as I…
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October 21, 2019, was a golden day for those interested in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Somehow, across a variety of teaching and learning platforms, several educators…
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In Blended and Flipped Learning, Online Education
Engaged Gazes: Principles that Online and Flipped Teaching Can Learn From Themed Museum Exhibits
December 11, 2019 Kevin Yee
Online instructors have known for some time that the primary work of creating an online course consists of “curation,” which is usually understood to be a matter of selecting…
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Don’t I Know You from Somewhere? This whole thing started when I played two video games, one after the other, that I imagine almost no one plays in sequence.…
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How to Keep from Going MIA in Your Online Course
October 11, 2019 Steve Dwinnells, PhD
As an adjunct professor and one who works daily with faculty in helping them understand online education, I have noticed and heard of increasing numbers of professors going missing…
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Online learning is becoming more prevalent in colleges and universities. When I arrived in higher education, I could not imagine how online classes would work since the connection to…
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Supporting Underprepared Students in the Online Classroom
September 25, 2019 Lisa Borrero, PhD, and Amanda Jayne Miller, PhD
Engaging students through a computer screen requires a unique approach to pedagogy and innovative course design. The feeling of “getting it right” typically involves a good deal of testing…
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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…
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Multi-Faculty Collaboration to Design Online General Studies Courses
September 10, 2019 B. Jean Mandernach, PhD
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…
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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…
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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…
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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…