In May’s issue, I discussed the necessary considerations for designing group-based learning activities for online courses. Here, I give concrete examples that can be used to craft different types of group-based learning activities for your classes. For each type of activity, remember to consider the
The start of the term is a critical time for any course, when students form an impression that can help or hinder them for the duration of a class. There are three key practices that can set the tone for the entire term and have
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
In an online learning environment, the discussion board is the heart and soul of the course. The posts, queries, responses, and exchanges aren’t just about learning the course content—they also help to humanize the course. The trouble is, of course, that it’s not always easy
When designed and implemented effectively, online learning holds huge potential for education, but many online courses that we see nowadays are not designed based on sound instructional design and adult learning principles. Simply providing students with online content and expecting them to learn on their
For a while in my online teaching career, I’d been reluctant to use group learning techniques with my students. My students are primarily undergraduate majors who have been out of school for a while and generally need more hand-holding (or so I thought). What I’ve
The famous baseball player Cal Ripkin Jr. was known to hit 500 balls in practice per day. If he was working on the traditional model of higher education, his coach would watch him swing once, proclaim that he has the right technique, and have him
“The New Cheating Economy,” an article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education (2016), tells the story of two Western Carolina University professors who set up a fake online class to see what forms of cheating they could detect. Their story shows that cheating is
As professors, we work hard to create the perfect syllabus for our courses. We outline our expectations, students’ responsibilities, and important policies. Ideally, we do all of this with a learner-centered approach. We are told that the more information we provide, the more successful our
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