Online Teaching and Learning

Tips from the Pros: How to Deepen Online Dialogue

Many faculty members express concern that discussion in their online courses is shallow or sparse. What is it that makes meaningful dialogue so elusive in online courses? Some practices in online course design and discussion facilitation can actually encourage superficial dialogue. Faculty grading and feedback

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What FERPA Isn’t

FERPA is probably the most widely misunderstood law relating to education. I consistently hear faculty and administrators make incorrect claims about FERPA. At one conference, a teacher proclaimed that using a student’s name in public is a violation, but that would mean I violate FERPA

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Making Use of the Internet of Benevolence

One widespread misconception is that the Internet is a place for people to express malevolence toward one another, but that’s not true. People are generalizing from a handful of social media forums. Flaming is actually a situation-dependent activity and is isolated to places such as

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Teaching Skill Based Courses Online

One of the classes that I teach is Keyboard Skills, often referred to as “group piano.” In a face-to-face (F2F) classroom, there can be anywhere from 12-36 students, each seated at a digital keyboard. Keyboard Skills classes typically meet on the usual MWF or TR

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Tips from the Pros: Is Creating Online Course Content Worth Your Time?

Advances in online education have opened up a host of opportunities for the integration of multimedia to enhance the student learning experience. As technology has improved, so has access to a plethora of open educational resources, publisher supplements, and instructional content that can be integrated

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Facilitating Real-time, Online Group Projects

While many things can be taught asynchronously, some things seem to require a live element. Negotiation is one of those things, as body language, tone, and reaction to the other person all play a critical role in determining the outcome of a negotiation. That means

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Applying Neurology to Online Videos

One common mistake I see among online content developers is to build videos that simply roll through content from start to finish. This is a “covering content” vision of teaching that expects students to grasp anything that is pitched to them. The model likens the

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Improve Your Teaching with a Teaching Toolbox

Years of teaching and coaching online faculty have taught me that the move from face-to-face to online teaching brings both benefits and dangers. One benefit is that the course’s center of gravity shifts from the lecture to discussion. Whereas much of a faculty member’s time

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Use Quizzes to Add Competition to Your Online Class

It is unfortunate that faculty members often deliberately avoid creating competition in their courses out of fear of damaging student self-esteem or privacy considerations. Competition is one of the best ways to achieve growth. We invariably perform better when we are striving to achieve in

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