While online learning provides students with accessibility, flexibility, and reflective interaction, it can also “create a sense of isolation, making it particularly difficult for a community of inquiry to thrive” (Borup, West, & Graham, 2012, p. 195). In these contexts, it can be difficult to
Social media fundamentally transformed the web by making everyone a content producer. But this move from web 1.0 to 2.0 also exploded the number of websites that people wanted to monitor. Now we want to see what is going on with our hundreds of Facebook
One of the central challenges to structuring meaningful discussion in courses with online components is to identify what shared learning experiences students are able to accomplish on their own, what learning experiences require dynamic support, and what kind of dynamic support would be best (e.g.,
One of the best things about online education is the ease with which we can incorporate retrieval practice, also known as the testing effect, into our teaching. This is the well-established cognitive principle that attempting to get information out of memory, as we do when
Have you ever experienced the eerie, but familiar, sensation that your students have not done the required reading and are not prepared for class? We all know that our class sessions would be a lot more enjoyable—for us and for our students—if our students were
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
On the first day of class, when I’m introducing Team-Based Learning to my students, I often hear a few groans. I ask the students how many have been involved in team work or group work before. I ask the ones who have for some pros
Group activities are an excellent way to improve student learning in an online course. But they invariably raise the free-rider problem—the student who does not contribute his or her fair share of the effort. This is particularly bothersome to students when there is one group
I remember the first time I tackled the controversial subject of students as customers. It was in an in-house newsletter, well before the advent of the Internet and e-mail. Even so, I had numerous phone calls, memos, encounters on campus, and discussions about it in
Participation continues to be one of the most common methods faculty use to get students involved in their learning. It’s a go-to strategy for many, but various studies have shown that it’s not always used in ways that realize its full potential. We go to
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