The online classroom can sometimes feel like a lonely place due to a lack of presence of the instructor and other students. This lack of presence can negatively affect learning and lead to student attrition. Fortunately, some relatively simple measures can significantly add the essential
Project-based learning is a hot topic in education, but most faculty do not understand how to incorporate it into their teaching. The principle is simple: Students learn best when they learn in the process of working toward a goal. The main value of project-based learning
Students enter online courses with various levels of knowledge, experience, needs, and expectations. It’s important to get a sense of what students already know in order to provide the appropriate levels of support and challenge.
One of the biggest complaints about online courses is that students feel disconnected. They don’t know the teacher or fellow students in the class. In online courses, teachers regularly use discussion to make connections with and between students. In a survey of over 350 faculty,
Clearly written goals and objectives serve several important functions in an online course. They provide students a “successful pathway to learning,” indicate to the instructor teaching points to hit when teaching the course, and suggest appropriate teaching and assessment methods, says Sandra Bennett, instructional designer
Online course content should be challenging, but the course itself should be straightforward and include “purposeful redundancy” to aid navigation and provide multiple ways to learn, says Michelle Manganaro, who teaches online education and communications courses at several institutions, including Massasoit Community College. In terms
Incivility in an online course can reduce student satisfaction and negatively affect retention. This is why it’s important to understand what causes it, design your course to minimize it, and know what to do when you encounter it.
Some technologies become so ubiquitous that we wonder how we ever got along without them. How did people cook before microwaves, and how did we get money out of banks before ATMs? Google Drive is one of those technologies. Drive is Google’s cloud-based suite of
During the last six years, I have become a convert to online teaching, offering students opportunities to participate collaboratively in my online literacy courses. Below are some ways I use educational technology to foster collaboration.
As classrooms become more digitally enhanced, many educators consider how they will move traditionally face-to-face elements of their content so that interactions are not lost in translation to online environments. In the language arts classroom, two such activities are the writers’ workshop and literature circles—both
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