Online Education

Three Ways to Efficiently and Effectively Support Online Learners

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 online, I drowned in my course. I was making myself available 24 hours/seven days a week. If a student posted, I felt I had to reply immediately. They were counting on me regardless of time of day,’” says Dr. Laurie Grosik, assistant professor in the master in health science program at Saint Francis University. In an interview with Online Classroom, she suggested ways to support online students without creating an undue burden on the instructor.

Rob Kelly October 15, 2015

The Learning Paradigm in Online Courses

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 teaching and student discovery and construction of knowledge over transfer of knowledge from instructor to student.

Mary Bart October 6, 2015

How to Give Your Students Better Feedback in Less Time

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, if any, effect on student outcomes. John Hattie compared more than 100 factors related to student achievement from more than 180,000 studies and ranked the factors from most significant to least significant. Remarkably, “Programmed Instruction” came out at the bottom. While faculty toil over getting that perfect lecture, the variation in learning outcomes from different lectures is negligible.

John Orlando, PhD September 29, 2015

Scenario-Based Learning in the Online Classroom

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, from text-based case studies to interactive, immersive simulations. Regardless of the resources that you have available, there are effective ways to put students in scenarios that contribute to their learning.

Rob Kelly September 24, 2015

From F2F to Online: Getting It Right

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 and put it online and teach it electronically, you will fail miserably,” says Paul S. Caron, director of education at Lewiston-Auburn College, whose first experience teaching online taught him some valuable lessons about how to provide students with an effective, supportive, and motivating learning experience.

Rob Kelly August 28, 2015

Rethinking Direct Instruction in Online Learning

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 doesn’t work” (Daniel and Bizer, 2005, p. 103). Direct Instruction is an instructional model that consists of three main components: modeling, guided practice with formative feedback, and independent practice. When utilized correctly, the Direct Instruction model is anything but boring, and students should never be passive recipients of learning. Beyond the scope of a traditional classroom, there are ways to incorporate Direct Instruction in an online format. The I Do, We Do, You Do structure of Direct Instruction can be utilized to present new material, guide students through the learning process using constructive feedback, and allow space for students to feel part of a larger community of learners as they work in collaboration with peers to demonstrate their understanding. This takes intentionality and effort on behalf of the professor, but this is a worthwhile endeavor as we strive to educate our online learners.

Kristi Bronkey July 13, 2015

How to Foster Critical Thinking, Student Engagement in Online Discussions

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 clear expectations, carefully crafted questions, timely and useful feedback, and creative facilitation.

Rob Kelly June 12, 2015

Five Steps to Improving Online Group Work Assignments

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. The reasons for requiring a group project vary from one discipline to another, but there are educational and career motives for requiring group projects. Students will have an opportunity to develop team skills, improve communication skills, and leverage their own personal interests and experiences to contribute to a group project.

Gregory Wells April 20, 2015

Save the Last Word for Me: Encouraging Students to Engage with Complex Reading and Each Other

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 particularly complex, as students are typically reluctant to share their interpretations because they are not confident in their understanding. This can inhibit meaningful interactions with peers within an online discussion.

Aimee deNoyelles, EdD, Janet Mannheimer Zydney, PhD, and Kay Kyeong-Ju Seo, PhD April 13, 2015

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