Online Learning 2.0: The Benefits of Shared Document Editing

A team project should include some lessons about collaboration. In particular, students need to learn how to do shared document editing. Most people are still using outdated systems and methods of collaboration from the paper age that waste time and create errors. Students need to

Read More »

How the Heck Do You Do Service-Learning Online?

Service-learning has been used extensively in health professions education. However, there has been limited use of service-learning in the online learning environment due in part to the difficulty of managing the community aspects of this pedagogy. Kettering College has implemented service-learning in an online program

Read More »

Leveraging Recorded Mini-Lectures to Increase Student Learning

Creating useful and usable digital lecture materials for blended and online courses is challenging. Recording an instructor lecturing to a classroom can be difficult, and most students are not interested in watching a 50- to 90-minute recording of a lecture. And because students might not

Read More »
students working in a group

Seven Characteristics of Good Learners

I’ve seen lots of lists that identify the characteristics of good teachers. They’re great reminders of what we should aspire to be as teachers. I haven’t seen many corresponding lists that identify the characteristics of good learners. I decided to put one

Read More »

Group Test-Taking Options to Consider

I’ve been doing some reading on group test-taking (often called cooperative or collaborative testing in the literature). I am stunned by the number of studies and the many ways the strategy has been used. I’m not going to summarize the research in this

Read More »

Putting PowerPoint in Its Place

Few, if any, technological tools generate stronger personal reactions among educators than PowerPoint, possibly because of its rampant popularity. According to information design expert Edward Tufte in his book The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, “PowerPoint itself has transcended mere software status to become a cultural

Read More »

Reflecting on Active Learning Experiences 30 Years Ago

As part of a keynote panel discussion for the Improving University Teaching Conference in Santiago, Chile (July 2013), I was asked to ponder the issue of “30 Years of Active Learning.” Active learning has a much longer history than that, but I have had 30

Read More »

Getting Students to Do the Reading

Getting students to do their assigned reading is a struggle. Most teachers don’t need anyone to tell them what the research pretty consistently reports. On any given day, only 20 to 30 percent of the students arrive at class having done the reading. Faculty are

Read More »
Archives

Get the Latest Updates

Subscribe To Our Weekly Newsletter

Magna Digital Library
wpChatIcon

If you're looking to improve how you handle online office hours, consider the strategies adopted by Deborah Vietze, professor of psychology and urban education at the City University of New York.

She uses Blackboard Collaborate to set up a virtual office, which she leaves open for the entire semester and holds office hours three days a week from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. The following are some things that she does in this space that help her manage virtual office hours: