Wallflowers in the Online Classroom
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,…
Supporting the Mental Health Needs of Online Students
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.…
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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…
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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?…
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Promoting Learning: The Instructor’s Main Mission or a Secondary Duty?
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…
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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…
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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…
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How to Give Your Students Better Feedback in Less Time
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,…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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Save the Last Word for Me: Encouraging Students to Engage with Complex Reading and Each Other
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…
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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…
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Taking the Leap: Moving from In-Person to Online Courses
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.…
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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…
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In Online Education, Teaching with Technology
Using Facebook to Enrich the Online Classroom
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…
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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…
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Evaluating Discussion Forums for Undergraduate and Graduate Students
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…
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Online Student Retention Requires a Collaborative Approach
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…
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Babson Study: Distance Education Enrollment Growth Continues, But at Slowest Rate Ever
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…
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“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…
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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…
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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…
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Five Tips for Dealing with Combative Students in the Online Environment
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…
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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…
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In Blended and Flipped Learning, Online Education
Thinking Horizontally and Vertically About Blended Learning
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…
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There are many studies that look at how online students differ from those in face-to-face classes in terms of performance, satisfaction, engagement, and other factors. It is well-known that…
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Most online faculty know that discussion is one of the biggest advantages of online education. The increased think-time afforded by the asynchronous environment, coupled with the absence of public…
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Four Crucial Factors in High-Quality Distance Learning Courses
October 31, 2014 Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti
“Distance learning is here to stay. Educational institutions should have a vision for what type of distance learning programs they will implement and the standards they will hold to.…
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In Course Design, Online Education
Instructional Design Based on Cognitive Theory
October 17, 2014 Rob Kelly
Andy Stanfield, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence at Florida Institute of Technology, is a proponent of using Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning to improve…
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In Educational Assessment, Online Education
Alternative Assessment Methods for the Online Classroom
October 3, 2014 Rob Kelly
Tests and quizzes are often the primary means of assessing online learner performance; however, as Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt, online instructors and coauthors of numerous online learning books,…
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How Does Temperament Affect Online Student Success and Retention?
September 23, 2014 Rob Kelly
o certain personality traits increase students’ chances of success in the online learning environment? It’s an intriguing question that has not received much attention, an oversight that Ben Meredith,…
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In small online courses, instructors have the luxury of participating in frequent personal interactions with students in online discussions. But doing this with more than 15 students can be…
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Introduction to Key Concepts in Five Minutes or Less: The ‘Did You Know?’ Microlecture Series
September 11, 2014 Julia VanderMolen Ph.D.
The traditional, hour-long lecture that is so familiar to on-the-ground undergraduates has little place in an online learning environment. However, a shorter, more tightly focused microlecture can help engage…
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Building Community and Creating Relevance in the Online Classroom
September 8, 2014 Amy Erickson and Catz Neset
Remember feeling nervous before starting your first day on the job? You may have experienced butterflies in your stomach, had questions about expectations, or concerns about learning the rules…
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A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: Raising, Communicating, and Enforcing Expectations in Online Courses
August 22, 2014 Marie A. Revak PhD
As an instructor new to the online environment, I carefully reviewed the syllabus and the requirements for the course discussions and assignments and incorporated the following ideas from Myers-Wylie,…
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I have been teaching online courses for more than eight years now. I was one of the first at my previous institution to transition a face-to-face (F2F) course to…