A FREE PUBLICATION FROM THE CREATORS OF THE TEACHING PROFESSOR

teaching online courses

Preparing Your Online Students for the Tough Weeks Ahead

Our courses are rolled out to online students with assignments scheduled for each week. Some of these assignments are relatively easy, meaning there will be weeks that are “light” in terms of scheduled assignments, while others will be “killer” weeks because of especially difficult assignments and/or a large number of assignments. While you need to prepare students to do all the assignments, it is especially important that you pre-assist them for those killer weeks. If you don’t do this, their anxiety can markedly increase, their involvement in and enthusiasm for the course can decrease, and you can lose them altogether.

Errol Craig Sull November 18, 2010

Online Teaching Challenge: Creating an Emotional Connection to Learning, part 2

“One of the biggest barriers to online learning is our inability to respond in the moment, unless we happen to be on live chat or video, which is really rare in most of the online learning world,” says Rick Van Sant, associate professor of education at Ferris State University.

Rob Kelly September 30, 2010

How Much Multimedia Should You Add to PowerPoint Slides When Teaching Online?

PowerPoint is versatile in allowing us to add multimedia (graphics, sound, audio, video, text, animation, etc.) to our presentations for keeping online students’ rapt attention. But how much multimedia should you add? In answering this question, I find that taking into consideration students’ learning styles and cultural/international backgrounds can help to lessen the risk of using too much or too little multimedia in your online PPTs.

Debra Ferdinand PhD September 22, 2010

Improving Online Learning, part 2

Editor’s Note: In Tuesday’s post, the author explained how he used streaming media to enhance the delivery of his online course content. In this post, he discusses the impact on student learning, and answers the question … Was it worth the extra work?

Jerry Kapus PhD September 9, 2010

Integrating Social Media into Online Education

Many people take it on faith that online education must be run through a learning management system (LMS) like Blackboard, Angel, etc. Those systems were originally designed to allow faculty to move their courses online without having to learn HTML coding. They provided all of the tools needed to deliver an online course in one package.

John Orlando, PhD September 8, 2010

Improving Online Learning, part 1

Instructors have a myriad of technological tools available to enhance online instruction, such as blogs, wikis, and streaming audio and video. I have been particularly interested in streaming audio and video to deliver course content in a dynamic mode that captures the energy of the traditional classroom presentation while taking advantage of the Web’s functionality to combine text, audio, and images. However, given the significant time it takes to design and create a presentation for streaming over the Web, I have wondered whether the time commitment is justified by the learning benefit for students. Do bells and whistles enhance learning online?

Jerry Kapus PhD September 7, 2010

Providing Multiple Paths for Learning

Students come to an online course with different interests, prior knowledge, and preferred learning styles. This is something that Stephen Holland, chair of the English department at Muscatine Community College and online learning and training associate at the Eastern Iowa Community College District, takes into account whenever he creates or seeks to improve an online course.

Rob Kelly August 5, 2010

Teaching Students with Learning Disabilities in the Online Classroom

Students with learning disabilities tend to learn better in the online environment, but institutions are not doing enough to prepare instructors to meet their needs, says Mary Beth Crum, an online instructor at the University of Wisconsin—Stout and Walden University.

Rob Kelly July 22, 2010

Student Performance and Satisfaction: Online vs. Face to Face

Many faculty have questions about the relative merits of online courses versus the traditional face-to-face classroom experiences. Researchers also have an interest in the question, and a variety of studies have been conducted with the usual mixed results but overall accumulating evidence that online courses can provide rich learning experiences. But for many faculty, it is still an open and individual question. Many would like to have the opportunity Kathleen Dolan describes.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD July 15, 2010

Teaching Standardized Courses: Advantages and Disadvantages

Online courses are increasingly being developed by a team of instructional designers, curriculum specialists, and instructional technologists. In the majority of cases, these courses feature standardized content such as a common syllabus and assignments, and reusable course modules and learning objects.

Mary Bart July 12, 2010

A FREE PUBLICATION FROM THE CREATORS OF THE TEACHING PROFESSOR

teaching online courses

Stay Updated with Faculty Focus!

TOPICS

Stay Updated with
Faculty Focus!