Are you having trouble getting your online students to contribute equally to team projects? If so, perhaps you should try varying the membership of these teams because, according to a study by Brian Dineen (see reference below), doing so can reduce social loafing and improve online collaboration.
A few years ago, our university started accelerating its distance learning program. Some professors designed courses that worked well, while others found that 100 percent
A good textbook is crucial to an online course. Because so much of an online instructor’s interaction is based largely on e-mail, chat, or online discussion boards and groups, the textbook must provide structure and deliver the course content. Here are some things to consider when evaluating an online course textbook:
Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008 reports that higher education institutions believe that the economic changes will have a positive impact on overall college enrollments, with online courses and programs for working adults seeing the greatest interest.
Take a few minutes to consider the following online teaching tips to help you start out the new year revitalized, enthusiastic, eager, and just happy as hell to be teaching online
Existing distance learning research falls into several main areas. Some lend themselves to future research to expand the knowledge base, but others do not need to be revisited. Here are the distance education research topics to avoid:
Has the rapid expansion of online education put your institution on a collision course with faculty incentive policies? Although more and more faculty are teaching online, few colleges and universities are proactively addressing faculty workload, promotion, and tenure policies to more accurately reflect the differences between teaching online and teaching face-to-face.
In asynchronous discussion forums, participants usually come from diverse backgrounds, including gender and culture, and the textual cues they post online are usually reflections of their own diversity. How you handle equity and diversity issues can be a key to online course retention.
I recently conducted a survey of more than 300 online students to learn of their most vexing issues with online courses. One item—of the 40+ mentioned—was cited by 68 percent of the students: poor feedback from their instructors. […]
If your institution offers online courses, you know that finding quality adjuncts is only half of the staffing battle. Keeping them is sometimes even more difficult. Defections are common as adjuncts report feeling disconnected from the campus community they serve, and there’s always competition from others schools who may offer a better pay rate.
