Teaching Strategies and Techniques

online course design checklist

Checklist for Online Discussion Design and Facilitation

1. Do you ask discussion questions that promote critical thinking?

2. Do you engage students in different types of discussion activities?

3. Do you clearly explain your expectations?

4. Do you provide exemplary and poor discussion post examples to students?

5. Do

Read More »

Infographics Assignments for Better Learning

Most faculty require students to present the results of their research and thinking in text form—the ubiquitous “paper” assignment. But in the real world, information is often presented in visual form. Reports are loaded with graphics to represent information. A mutual fund does not demonstrate

Read More »

How to Motivate Your Online Students

Many years ago, a higher-education publication ran a commentary from a faculty member who complained that students were bored by her lectures because she was not entertaining them enough, but that she should not have to entertain them; however, she was wrong.

Read More »

Unbundling the Learning Management System

The Learning Management System (LMS) was developed to allow faculty to create online courses without having to learn HTML. It provided even the least technologically sophisticated faculty member with an opportunity to teach online by centralizing all course functions in one “mothership.”

Read More »

Tips for Addressing Loafing in Group Projects

Group work is a valuable learning device that teaches teamwork skills which students will use no matter what profession they enter. It is perhaps even more valuable in online classes, as more and more organizations are using distributed employees who need to coordinate their work

Read More »

Creating Global Classrooms

A global classroom is an initiative between two partner universities, often in different countries, designed to bring students together through a project or collaboration. These can work in any academic discipline—the objective is to increase cross-cultural awareness while the student learns about the course subject.

Read More »

The Online Education Year in Review

This year’s Online Education Year-In-Review comes to us via Ray Schroeder, associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois Springfield and long-time thought leader on distance education. I recently spoke with Ray about emerging areas in distance education over the past year,

Read More »

Making Videos with a Lightboard

There are many ways to make engaging and highly effective videos for education, including live action, voice-over imagery, animation, stop action, and others. The newest entry to the list is the Lightboard, invented by Michael Peshkin at Northwestern University. This format uses a studio shot

Read More »
Archives
The 2025 Teaching Professor Conference

Get the Latest Updates

Subscribe To Our Weekly Newsletter