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App of the Week: Noteshelf

I have a lot of apps. That is not surprising because as anyone knows, few apps are capable of doing everything they promise much less doing everything well. So, given the number of note-taking apps I already own, why am I still looking for that perfect note-taking app? Well, I have a confession to make: my penmanship is not the best but, at least, I can read it and what I am really after is an app that makes my handwriting on the iPad look and feel like what I write using pen/pencil and paper. That, more than anything else, has been the biggest impediment to me making the switch to total electronic note-taking.

Dave Yearwood, PhD September 7, 2012

Tips for Overcoming Online Discussion Board Challenges

Discussion boards are often viewed as the heart of online courses, and for good reason: the students can interact with one another 24/7, sharing, debating, and offering ideas, insights, suggestions, and information that stimulate the learning process. Yet challenges do happen in discussion, and these can be formidable. Left alone, they can quickly limit the effectiveness of any discussion and create problems throughout the online course.

Errol Craig Sull September 6, 2012

Mapping Success: Essential Elements of an Effective Online Learning Experience

An online course is like walking into a foreign land with an entire map laid out, but having no sense of the land’s origin or how to navigate the terrain. How the instructor formats and interacts with the class will ultimately determine the student’s travel experience. The purpose of this article is to provide an understanding of how the elements of an online course are integrated such that they form a cohesive whole that creates easy travel based upon instructor presence, appropriate feedback, and easy navigation for students.

Danielle Hathcock September 5, 2012

How Accurately Do Students Track Their Participation?

Grading participation presents a number of challenges. If instructors rely on their sense of who participated, how often, and in what ways, that can be a pretty subjective measure. After all, besides noting who’s contributing, the instructor needs to listen to what the student is saying, and frame a response while keeping the larger discussion context in mind. Is the discussion staying on track? Are there points that have yet to be made? If instructors opt for a more objective system, they face the cumbersome task of comment counting during the actual discussion. While listening to the student, the instructor must find the student’s name and record the comment. It requires a challenging set of multitasking skills.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD September 4, 2012

This Isn’t High School: Advice for Faculty Teaching First-Year Students

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. It’s week 12 of a 15-week-semester and a student shows up during office hours asking, begging, for some way that he can raise his grade. He needs a B, he says, or he could lose his scholarship.

Mary Bart August 27, 2012

Blended Learning Course Design Mistakes to Avoid

Blended learning course design entails more than simply converting content for online delivery or finding ways to supplement an existing face-to-face course. Ideally, designing a blended course would begin with identifying learning outcomes and topics, creating assignments and activities, determining how interaction will occur, and selecting the technologies to best achieve those learning outcomes. However, a variety of constraints often affect the way blended courses are developed, which can compromise their quality.

Rob Kelly August 24, 2012

Implementing High-Impact Learning Across the Institution

High-impact learning practices—first-year seminars, learning communities, service-learning, undergraduate research, and capstone experiences—can provide intensive learning for students and improve retention, persistence to degree, and postgraduate attainment. However, to be effective, institutions need high-level support and cross-divisional collaboration, says Lynn E. Swaner, a higher education consultant and coauthor (with Jayne E. Brownell) of Five High-Impact Practices: Research on Learning Outcomes, Completion, and Quality (Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2010). In an interview with Academic Leader, Swaner talked about her research and offered suggestions on successfully implementing these practices.

Rob Kelly August 23, 2012

Do Attendance Policies Influence Student Learning?

Most college teachers don’t need research results to confirm that class attendance is a problem for many students. Some skip occasionally, others regularly; and some we see for the first time on exam days. Most faculty believe that students learn the material much better when they regularly attend class, and hence policies that require attendance are now the norm in many (could we say most?) classrooms.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD August 21, 2012

Transforming Teaching through Supplementary Evaluations

Incredible changes have occurred in the brief 25 years I have spent as a professor in higher education. In the area of technology alone, significant innovations have impacted the way people work, play, and learn. The benefits these technological advances bring to faculty and students are incalculable.

Yet, some areas of higher education have undergone very little change.

Karyn W. Tunks PhD August 20, 2012

Establishing a Fair and Supportive Grading Environment

Grading serves multiple purposes. While the most obvious purpose is to evaluate students’ work — as a measure of competency, achievement, and meeting the expectations of the course — grading can also be a key to communication, motivation, organization and faculty/student reflection. It’s for that reason that Virginia Johnson Anderson, EdD, calls grading “a context-dependent, complex process.”

Mary Bart August 17, 2012

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