What is the best way to train and support a beginning online faculty member? At some colleges, the only option is on site training held on the campus over…
Online education programs are known for their convenience, but they’ve also developed a reputation for poor student retention rates. So when someone who oversees an online education program that…
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Why are you interested in improving your courses and instruction? That was the question posed to attendees to kick off the online seminar Five Steps to Improve Your Online…
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Establishing Online Instructor Performance Best Practices and Expectations
June 12, 2009 Lawrence Ragan PhD.
Helping faculty learn to survive and even thrive online is critical if we are to realize the potential of this new learning space. During a Magna online seminar awhile…
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One of the biggest problems with doing group projects online (and face-to-face) is student resistance, says Jan Engle, coordinator of instruction development at Governors State University. “One of the…
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Understanding the HEOA’s Student Authentication Provision for Distance Education Programs
June 3, 2009 Mary Bart
Hundreds of distance education administrators breathed a collective sigh of relief upon learning in a recent online seminar that the vast majority of schools are already in compliance with…
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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…
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In Educational Assessment, Online Education
Online Assessment: Tips on Rubrics, Discussion Boards and Gradebooks
May 4, 2009 Mary Bart
Even the most experienced educators can feel overwhelmed when they teach their first hybrid or fully online course. On top of dealing with the time and space constraints of…
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In Educational Assessment, Online Education
Creating Better Multiple-Choice Tests for Online Courses
May 1, 2009 Patti Shank PhD CPT
Multiple-choice tests are commonly used to assess achievement of learning objectives because they can be efficient. Despite their widespread use, they’re often poorly designed. Poorly written multiple-choice tests are…
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In a study of student participation in threaded discussions, Scott Warnock, an assistant professor of English at Drexel University, found that students who post early in threaded discussions tend…
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Classroom Management Tips for Online Courses: Dealing with Difficult Students
April 27, 2009 Mary Bart
“Managing student expectations is important in any class but even more so for online and blended courses where it’s easy for students to feel lost,” says Susan Ko, executive…
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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…
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Jonathan P. Mathews, assistant professor of energy and geo-environmental engineering at Penn State University, teaches a high-enrollment (more than 400 students) general education online course, Energy and the Environment.…
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In Blended and Flipped Learning, Online Education
Strategies for Teaching Blended Learning Courses, Maybe You (and Your Students) Can Have It All
March 16, 2009 Mary Bart
Blended learning, which combines face-to-face and online learning activities into a single course, has experienced tremendous growth during the past few years. A blended learning course (also called a…
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Online course design is crucial to student success. It should reflect the intended learning outcomes and provide enough guidance for students to easily navigate the course without being overly…
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In Course Design, Online Education
Usability Issues That Impact Online Learning
March 5, 2009 Patti Shank PhD CPT
Despite the benefits of online education, there are inevitable frustrations as well. The tools online learners need to use take time to master and don’t always behave in intuitive…
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Rebecca Arbisi, chair of the business department at State Fair Community College in Missouri, offers the following tips for improving the quality of threaded discussions:
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One of the key strengths of a distance education program also can be a weakness. While web-based learning increases dramatically the pool of potential students that you can target,…
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Using Video Clips to Stimulate Discussion in Online Courses
February 27, 2009 Rob Kelly
If you’re looking to improve threaded discussions in your online courses, consider using brief video clips as discussion prompts. When carefully selected and integrated into a course, these clips…
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Seven Ways to Improve Student Satisfaction in Online Courses
February 26, 2009 Rob Kelly
Preparing students for the online learning experience and managing expectations are critical to student satisfaction, says Marie Gould, assistant professor and program manager of Business Administration, and Denise Padavano,…
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Instant messaging can be an effective online learning tool that can build community and foster collaborative learning. The following are some suggestions from Debby Kilburn, computer science professor at…
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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…
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Students’ satisfaction with the online learning environment is an important part of their success. A survey of students at Westmoreland County Community College (WCCC) revealed exactly what online students…
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Are you having trouble getting your online students to contribute equally to team projects? If so, perhaps you should try varying the membership of these teams because, according to…
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A few years ago, our university started accelerating its distance learning program. Some professors designed courses that worked well, while others found that 100 percent Web delivery wasn’t effective…
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How to Select the Right Textbook for an Online Course
January 8, 2009 Guy Lochiatto
A good textbook is crucial to an online course. Because so much of an online instructor’s interaction is based largely on e-mail, chat, or online discussion boards and groups,…
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Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008 reports that higher education institutions believe that the economic changes will have a positive impact on overall college enrollments,…
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Online Teaching Tips to Ensure a Productive New Year
January 1, 2009 Errol Craig Sull
Take a few minutes to consider the following online teaching tips to help you start out the new year revitalized, enthusiastic, eager, and just happy as hell to be…
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Existing distance learning research falls into several main areas. Some lend themselves to future research to expand the knowledge base, but others do not need to be revisited. Here…
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In Academic Leadership, Online Education
How to Create Appropriate Online Faculty Incentive Policies
December 22, 2008 Mary Bart
Has the rapid expansion of online education put your institution on a collision course with faculty incentive policies? Although more and more faculty are teaching online, few colleges and…
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Five Tips for Respecting Diversity in Asynchronous Discussion Forums
December 9, 2008 Marianne Castano Bishop
In asynchronous discussion forums, participants usually come from diverse backgrounds, including gender and culture, and the textual cues they post online are usually reflections of their own diversity. How…
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Overcoming the #1 Complaint of Online Students: Poor Instructor Feedback
November 28, 2008 Errol Craig Sull
I recently conducted a survey of more than 300 online students to learn of their most vexing issues with online courses. One item—of the 40+ mentioned—was cited by 68…
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In Faculty Development, Online Education
Four Ways to Support and Retain Your Online Adjuncts
November 24, 2008 Mary Bart
If your institution offers online courses, you know that finding quality adjuncts is only half of the staffing battle. Keeping them is sometimes even more difficult. Defections are common…
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Four Tips to Help Distance Educators Manage Time Spent Online
November 12, 2008 Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti
Has email overtaken your life? Teresa Marie Kelly offers hope. As a distance education faculty member at Kaplan University, Kelly knows first hand how easy it is to fall…
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Distance Education – Measuring the Benefits and Costs
November 3, 2008 Mary Bart
In the early years, web-based distance education was looked at as a magic bullet. A relatively quick and easy way to increase revenue without a lot of additional work…
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In Course Design, Online Education
Nine Tips for Creating a Hybrid Course
October 29, 2008 Rob Kelly
Most instructors supplement their face-to-face courses with some online learning materials such as online syllabi, handouts, PowerPoint slides, and course-related Web links. All of these can add to the…
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In Course Design, Online Education
How to Assist Faculty with an Online Course Template
October 13, 2008 Renee Cicchino
How do you get the best out of your online faculty? Don’t make them re-invent the wheel each time they create an online course. Let them do what they’re…
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Faculty need to consider learning objectives, learning styles, accessibility, cost, and available technical support when designing distance learning courses, says Laurie Hillstock, manager of distance learning at Clemson University.…
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Build Learning Communities Throughout an Online Program
September 21, 2008 Rob Kelly
Nova Southeastern University’s Master’s in Health Law program is designed to encourage the creation of learning communities in which students view each other as partners rather than isolated individuals…
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Susan Baim, assistant professor of business technology at Miami University-Middletown, uses weblogs to supplement her face-to-face courses to improve students’ abilities to use the internet as a research medium…