Guest speakers can be powerful mechanisms to promote student learning and provide additional perspectives on course material. They can help students grasp topics that require more expertise than the instructor may possess and offer insight into the day-to-day workings of a particular career path. Still,
It’s well known that group work benefits the learning process but also that learners can dread the idea of doing group projects. So, as online instructors, what can we do about this situation? Research shows that group projects in online courses are fraught with mixed
When I began teaching just about 30 years ago, the classroom norm was chalk and chalkboard. Not a computer in sight! Over the decades, I have learned to use courseware and various digital applications, augmenting my once wholly analog approach to teaching step-by-step with digital
I advise a fraternity on my campus, and in early August, several of the officers came to me concerned about how to keep students on track academically this year. Their main worry was most students’ lack of interest in a fully online educational experience. The
The HyFlex teaching model has drawn considerable attention recently as an alternative to the online, face-to-face, and hybrid teaching models. A HyFlex course is offered both face-to-face and online at once. But instead of dividing course activities between the two modes, as a hybrid course
Discussions in online courses are both an opportunity and a problem. They are an opportunity for students to think more deeply about topics and respond to opposing views without the pressure of having to come up with a response on the spot in front of
Transforming an in-person course to an online teaching and learning environment is always challenging, especially if the course has a laboratory or studio component. As two co-instructors of a large introductory inquiry-based biology laboratory course with nearly 400 students enrolled, we faced such a challenge
Conferences between student writers and their writing teachers are a time-honored staple of process-oriented writing instruction. Online classes, while they may incorporate many of the other elements of the writing process model, frequently omit writing conferences since the face-to-face, real-time format that is typical of
Since the closure of schools and universities this spring, Microsoft has been producing a wealth of remote learning resources in support of its educational tools, most notably Microsoft OneNote Class Notebook and Teams. OneNote Class Notebook, launched in 2014 and built on Microsoft’s note-taking tool,
The global pandemic has caused emergency shifts in how we teach. Online learning is nothing new, but transitioning a once-dynamic in-person class to a screen in a synchronous format poses some challenges for “new to synchronous” teaching faculty. As two department chairs at a mid-size
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