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…
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…
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…
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.…
In Course Design, Online Education
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…
In Educational Assessment, Online Education
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,…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
August 11, 2014 Stephanie Maher Palenque and Meredith DeCosta PhD
Faculty use asynchronous discussions to extend and enhance instructional practices in the online classroom. It is widely reported that online discussions play an integral role in facilitating students’ learning,…
Teddi Fishman, director of the International Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University, advocates an instructional design/community-building approach to academic integrity rather than an adversarial approach. Her stint as…
This summer I am teaching online, in part because many students prefer to take classes online. Summer is the time for mischief, experimentation and creation—there is just something about…
June 30, 2014 Emily A. Moore
Traditionally, when a face-to-face student requested a sign language interpreter or other assistance, individualized accommodation arrangements were made through institutional channels. With the advent of online courses, however, the…
Through regular student feedback, Jennifer Luzar, associate professor of language arts at Northwood University, has compiled the following things students want in their online courses and ways that she…
May 20, 2014 Ben Vilkas and Crystal McCabe
As online education enrollment increases, (Allen & Seaman, 2011), innovative practices are needed to improve quality instruction. One area that needs further exploration is that of promoting online students’…
According to self-determination theory, a theory developed by Deci and Ryan, three basic psychological needs affect motivation: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Susan Epps, associate professor of Allied Health Sciences,…
April 29, 2014 John Steele Thomas Dyer Elizabeth Larson Rick Holbeck
In Part I of this article, we wrote about the value in collaborating with peers. Here we conclude the piece by sharing with you the steps we followed in…
April 28, 2014 John Steele Thomas Dyer Elizabeth Larson Rick Holbeck
Most of us have encountered students who struggle with a particular course objective or assignment. Finding innovative ways to help students break through these barriers to learning is a…
When Hayley Lake, lecturer at Eastern Washington University, got the opportunity to develop an online version of Survey of Alcohol & Drug Problems, a multidisciplinary course that draws students…
April 22, 2014 Kelly Grattan PhD
The online learning environment, no matter how robust the platform, does not fully address the isolation many students feel. This environment can be especially isolating for doctoral students. In…
April 14, 2014 Louise Sharrar and Paula Bigatel
The rapid growth and popularity of online learning is necessitating the creation of online courses that actively engage learners. Research has shown that effective integration of multimedia that is…
Sustained, high-quality student participation usually doesn’t happen on its own in the online learning environment. The instructor needs to model participation, create assignments that encourage it, and foster an…
In Blended and Flipped Learning, Online Education
March 31, 2014 Barbi Honeycutt PhD and Sarah Glova
We recently asked a group of teaching assistants, “How do you think today’s college classroom is different than when you were an undergraduate student? What is the most significant…
March 28, 2014 Elwin L. Jones and Ronald C. Jones
In the online instructional environment, the discussion questions, posts, and responses are the lifeblood of the course. Although writing formal papers and completing quizzes are typical components of online…
Because online courses have fewer opportunities for the spontaneous, real-time exchanges of the face-to-face classroom, online instruction requires a deliberate approach to design and facilitation. As Bethany Simunich says,…
March 20, 2014 Meredith DeCosta Emily Bergquist and Rick Holbeck
Online teaching is growing at a rapid pace. To meet the increasing demand of online education, many courses have been designed to enable the instructor to be more of…
Consideration of convenience and flexibility typically leads instructors and instructional designers to favor asynchronous over synchronous learning. But given the potential benefits of synchronous communication, perhaps it’s time to…
