Threaded discussions can provide excellent opportunities for students to engage in critical thinking. But critical thinking isn’t an automatic feature of these discussions. It needs to be nurtured through clear expectations, carefully crafted questions, timely and useful feedback, and creative facilitation.
The concept of universal design for learning (UDL) was initially developed in order to provide equal access to learning opportunities for students in face-to-face courses. It has since been adapted for many learning situations, including online courses. However, there is still a widespread perception that
Adult students in particular want instructors to show their humanity, because they view instructors more as colleagues and coinvestigators than as the “sage on the stage.” This is why it is critical to establish a rapport with students right at the beginning of your online
When Sheri Litt became dean of arts and sciences at Florida State College’s Open Campus, one of her priorities was to address the issue of online learner satisfaction and success. “We started looking at the data,” Litt says. “We looked at students’ comments on surveys
Many of us instructors take it for granted that students know how to read for understanding, but I find that this is not necessarily the case. In order to lessen their anxiety and make class readings less intimidating, a few years ago I put together
The discussion forum is an essential part of online courses. It’s where students interact, reflect, exchange ideas, and expand their knowledge base. The quality of the discussion forum depends on the ability to developa sense of community, the clarity of the discussion questions, and the
If you use collaborative assignments in your online course, you should assess those assignments collaboratively, said Rena Palloff, online instructor and coauthor (with Keith Pratt) of several online learning books, including Lessons from the Virtual Classroom: The Realities of Online Teaching (2013), during a recent
For the past 100 years, folks in higher education have assumed that feedback must be written. Even when the assignment itself was not in text form, such as a video, instructors usually provided written comments. But feedback can be given in a myriad of different
As the old adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and information represented in pictures can be very powerful. Information graphics, or infographics, are visual representations of information, data, or knowledge. Infographics ask for an active response from the viewer, raising the questions,
Determining the effectiveness of online learning interventions is essential to continuous online course improvement. Action research offers an exciting model for instructors to meet this challenge by enabling them to quickly probe for sensible solutions to pedagogical problems.
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