In Educational Assessment, Online Education
March 10, 2017 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
“Online classes are often intimidating for first-time students,” writes David St Clair. “They wrestle with the gnawing fear that their class has no anchor in the physical world and…
February 3, 2017 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…
December 12, 2016 Amy Peterson
The convenience and flexibility of the online learning environment allows learners to develop new skills and further their education, regardless of where they live. However, for all of its…
Classroom Assessment Techniques, or CATs, are simple ways to evaluate students’ understanding of key concepts before they get to the weekly, unit, or other summative-type assessment (Angelo & Cross,…
More and more students are flocking to the online classroom for the convenience of earning college credits from the comfort of their home. However, many of these students are…
Many instructors feel that they need to be experts in mathematics in order to understand analytics. But according to John Vivolo, director of online and virtual learning for New…
Students like online classes due to their flexibility and convenience. But not all students do well in these courses; the statistics indicate that online classes have a much higher…
March 14, 2016 Paula M. Bigatel PhD
During the past year and a half, our faculty development unit has been gathering data from students about how engaged they felt in their online courses. We wanted to…
The online classroom can sometimes feel like a lonely place due to a lack of presence of the instructor and other students. This lack of presence can negatively affect…
In his wonderful TED talk, Dan Meyer describes how he began one of his math classes by showing students a video of a hose slowly filling a bucket with…
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…
November 17, 2015 Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti
What does it mean to be a wallflower? Such a person might be thought of as shy and might sit apart from others at a party or social gathering,…
November 12, 2015 Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti
Every higher ed administrator knows that mental health services are becoming increasingly important on-campus. Fewer know that they are also important for students who study primarily or entirely online.…
There’s a growing body of evidence that indicates the educational benefits of game-based learning. Although some courses are likely to be more conducive to a game-based approach, it’s helpful…
A lot of faculty worry that they do. Given the cheating epidemic in college courses, why wouldn’t students be even more inclined to cheat in an unmonitored exam situation?…
October 30, 2015 Ronald C. Jones
As instructors, promoting learning is, or at least should be, our primary task. As an online instructor, I must enforce deadlines, respond to requests for accommodations, post announcements, provide…
Trying to support students in an online course can create an unsustainable burden on the instructor. “I’ve heard faculty members say things such as, ‘When I first started teaching…
In their 1995 Change magazine article, “From Teaching to Learning—a New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education,” Robert B. Barr and John Tagg described the Learning Paradigm, which emphasizes learning over…
September 29, 2015 John Orlando, PhD
Online instructors focus most of their teaching on curricular issues—what they will teach, how they will teach it, etc. But studies have found that differences in curriculum have little,…
Scenario-based learning can be an effective way for students to apply what they have learned to realistic situations. There are many different ways to design scenarios for online delivery,…
Valerie Powell, assistant professor of art at Sam Houston State University, decided to supplement her face-to-face courses to extend the classroom and provide opportunities for students who are not…
Successfully transferring a face-to-face course to the online learning environment requires careful preparations that take into account differences between these two modalities. “If you simply take your face-to-face class…
Direct Instruction has a bad reputation. It is often associated in higher education with long lectures and passive learners. “Passivity isn’t wrong because it’s boring; it’s wrong because it…
Threaded discussions can provide excellent opportunities for students to engage in critical thinking. But critical thinking isn’t an automatic feature of these discussions. It needs to be nurtured through…
Online Group Projects – Yikes! You can hear the moans and groans of students echoing through your computer monitors as you start the first week of your online course.…
April 13, 2015 Aimee deNoyelles, EdD; Janet Mannheimer Zydney, PhD; and Kay Kyeong-Ju Seo, PhD
Online discussions are often implemented in college classes to allow students to express their understanding and perceptions about the assigned readings. This can be challenging when the reading is…
You’re asking the wrong question. No, seriously, you’re probably asking the wrong question. Yeah, that’s a pretty bold statement. But I've read tens of thousands of questions meant to…
April 3, 2015 Jessica Harris and Sami Lange
The landscape: You have taught a class in-person for five years and due to a variety of reasons you have the option to teach it online ... next semester.…
I am not an athlete. I lack coordination and have some physical limitations. My husband, on the other hand, is an excellent skier. He isn’t a teacher but he…
In Online Education, Teaching with Technology
March 13, 2015 Danielle Geary, EdD
“Am I writing to myself?” That’s what I used to wonder when I first started teaching Spanish online a year ago. My learning management system, message boards, and group…
When Sheri Litt became dean of arts and sciences at Florida State College’s Open Campus, one of her priorities was to address the issue of online learner satisfaction and…
February 12, 2015 Gloria P. Craig, EdD
The discussion forum is an essential part of online courses. It’s where students interact, reflect, exchange ideas, and expand their knowledge base. The quality of the discussion forum depends…
February 9, 2015 Anne Reed
Institutions of higher education are increasingly using online courses and fully-online programs as tools to increase enrollment. There are many issues surrounding the subject of online education as an…
February 5, 2015 Company News
The 2014 Survey of Online Learning conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group and co-sponsored by the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), Pearson and Tyton Partners, reveals the number of…
“Online teaching can be a bit of a juggling act,” says Oliver Dreon, PhD, associate professor in the School of Education at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. Instructors must be…
According to a recent report by the Institute of International Education, there were more than 764,400 international students enrolled in U.S. universities and colleges in 2011/2012. This was a…
Careful preparation is essential to the success of an online course “to provide a positive experience for the students and to be able to maximize your time with students…
January 15, 2015 Victoria Smith PhD
Whether one teaches at the university, secondary, or elementary levels, all teachers encounter combative students. Mary Bart (2012) writes, “Even if you do everything right, there will be students…
Incivility in the online classroom can take many forms. Angela Stone Schmidt, director of graduate programs in the School of Nursing and associate dean College of Nursing & Health…
In Blended and Flipped Learning, Online Education
November 20, 2014 Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti
Blended learning has gone from being an interesting new hybrid of traditional and online courses to being an expected part of American education. When the Sloan Consortium last studied…
