In winter 2015, I was given the opportunity to design and teach my department’s first fully online course, in calculus. Some design challenges emerged in the process, not least of which was the question of assessing homework. In a face-to-face class, students either turn in
Sami Lange Last year, I decided to restructure my Introduction to Information Literacy course with a “build your grade” structure that would provide freedom to choose assignments while ensuring that students learned the core concepts. The results were very positive, and the format can be
So many important messages are communicated nonverbally in face-to-face courses. There’s tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, and the use of space—all with the potential to enhance the meaning of the verbal message. In online courses with the instructor not physically present, nonverbal communication is
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
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.
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,
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
A faculty member once told me that experience does not teach; only reflection on experience teaches. We become better teachers by reflecting on what went right or wrong after each class to learn what we should change in the future. This is why I try
Context is everything in learning. The events leading to the Civil War make sense only within the wider context of debates over states’ rights and federal power. Understanding these broader principles also improves retention of the events themselves because our minds are built to remember
One major attraction of social media is that we are using trusted sources to curate interesting content. Friends post funny videos and the like that appear on our Facebook timelines. With millions of new items appearing on the web daily, we could not possibly scan
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