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Building Learning Communities beyond the Online Classroom

Many online instructors strive to create a community of learners within their courses. But once the course is over, this community typically disbands. Robert Zotti is working on projects to sustain...

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Teachable Moments - The Grading Conference

Grading student papers may be the college instructor’s least pleasant duty. Most of us carefully mark each page, noting problems, questioning assumptions, and offering additional information, many...

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Simplifying Online Course Design

Good course design is essential to effective online learning. In an interview with Online Classroom, Richard Smith, associate professor and coordinator of the instructional technology program, and...

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Not Just for Introductory Courses

Most professors want students to know how to research and write in their fields. In fact, many degree programs now have introductory courses for majors with content that addresses these research and...

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Practical Advice for Going from Face to Face to Online

Developing an online course based on an existing face-to-face course requires more than learning how to use the technology and loading the material into the learning management system because, as...

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An Assignment that Prevents Plagiarism

A qualitative study of plagiarism (which was highlighted in the February 2010 issue of the newsletter) reported that although students know that plagiarism is wrong, most are quite confused about what...

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Brain-Based Online Learning Design

Abreena Tompkins, instruction specialist at Surry Community College, has developed a brain-based online course design model based on a meta-analysis of more than 300 articles. In this study, she...

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Dead Ideas in Teaching

In her 2010 presidential address to the Midwest Sociological Society (a published version of the speech is referenced below), Diane Pike proposed three ideas about teaching that she says are dead. She...

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Recommendations for Blended Learning Course Design

Blended learning course design entails more than simply converting content for online delivery or finding ways to supplement an existing face-to-face course. Ideally, designing a blended course would...

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Authentic Assignments: What Are They?

“I’ve heard several faculty mention the need for authentic assignments ... what are they?” I received that question recently in an email, and it is true that the combination of the two words has come...

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Using Student Facilitators in the Online Classroom

If you’re trying to get your online learners more engaged in online discussions, consider turning over the facilitation responsibilities to your students. This approach, says Walter Woolbaugh, a...

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Capstone Courses: Many Options

Capstone courses are now a requirement in many departments, programs, and college curricula. They vary across different dimensions, indicating that although their value is universally recognized, they...

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Ideas for Active Online Learning

Heidi Beezley, instructional technologist at Georgia Perimeter College, strives to instill online courses with active learning, “providing opportunities for students to meaningfully talk and listen,...

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Motivation: Intrinsic, Extrinsic, or More

Motivation—there are two kinds: intrinsic, which involves doing something because we want to do it, and extrinsic, which is doing something because we have to do it. A negative relationship exists...

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Frequent, Low-Stakes Grading: Assessment for Communication, Confidence

After going out for tacos, our students can review the restaurant on a website. They watch audiences reach a verdict on talent each season on American Idol. When they play video games—and they play...

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Cell Phones in Class: A Student Survey

Cell phones in the classroom—it’s a topic that generates much consternation among faculty. Are policies that prohibit their use enforceable? Are students texting in class? If so, how many? If a student...

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How Does Temperament Affect Online Learner Success and Retention?

Do certain personality traits increase students’ chances of success in the online learning environment? It’s an intriguing question that has not received much attention, an oversight that Ben Meredith,...

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Teaching Strategies That Help Students Learn

What skills do you wish your students had prior to taking your course? Reading comprehension, time management, listening, note-taking, critical thinking, test-taking? Let's face it, most students could...

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Reciprocal Feedback in the Online Classroom

Understanding learners’ experiences in the online classroom can help you improve your courses for current and future students and help build a strong learning community. Jill Schiefelbein, owner and...

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Too Many Papers: Two Solutions

I mostly teach basic technical writing, and I face the same problem that confronts many of us who teach writing. It’s hard enough getting students to do the assignments, and almost impossible to get...

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Overcoming the 10 Most Serious and Challenging Obstacles of Teaching Online

Anyone who teaches online has run into problems within their courses. Some of these problems can be complicated and if not correctly resolved can do major damage to the online instructor’s reputation...

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Giving Students Choices in How Much Assignments Count

Grades often get in the way of learning even though they are supposed to do just the opposite. When students get fixated on their grades, learning takes a back seat. How can instructors deal with the...

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9 Course Development Tips

As an instructional designer and online instructor at the Community College of Baltimore County Catonsville, Dionne Thorne has worked with many instructors as they develop their online courses. Based...

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Tutoring in Large Lectures?

Often faculty who teach large classes (and some who don’t) fantasize about sitting down and working individually with students. For many of us that’s the ideal teaching scenario, but for most of us...

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Tips for Humanizing Your Online Course

Taking an online course can be an isolating experience, but it doesn’t have to be. There are several key techniques you can employ to humanize your online courses and thus improve the learning...

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Students and Reading: An Impressive Analysis

Most college students don’t read well. Consequently, most don’t like reading assignments, and if they think they can get by without doing the reading, they don’t read. It’s a problem most faculty can...

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Discussion Board Assignments: Alternatives to the Question-and-Answer Format

If you’re having trouble getting students to engage in the discussion forum, perhaps it’s time to rethink how you use this tool. “Think of it as a place to foster interaction between the students...

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Museum Exhibits and Macroeconomics?

Museum exhibits are often part of art, architecture, history, and literature courses, but teaching a college economics course and using a museum exhibit? I think you’d have to agree, that’s quite...

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Be Proud You Teach Online!

Nearly all of us who teach online are proud of it and truly enjoy it. But there are two nagging problems besetting us. First, some feel apologetic for teaching online—“I’m teaching online, but only … ”...

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Course Satisfaction for Adult Students

What course characteristics “satisfy” adult students? What expectations do they have for their courses? These questions are important because more and more adults now attend higher education, and many...

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Selecting the Appropriate Communication Tools

When designing an online course it’s important to carefully consider which tools align with the course’s learning objectives and the types of communication that will occur.There are three types of...

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Quick Feedback, Engaged Students

We often wonder what we can do to help students engage with the material so they can learn it at a deeper level. Students don’t make that an easy task. They arrive in class having not read the material...

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Blended Learning: Integrating Online and F2F

Blended learning entails more than simply replacing class time with online course elements or supplementing an online course with face-to-face meetings. To be successful, the online and face-to-face...

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Does Detection Software Solve the Plagiarism Problem?

Here’s the scenario: Concerned about the problem of plagiarism, you decide to start using a plagiarism-detection software program (say a software program like those available from Turnitin.com). You...

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Creating an Ethical Online Environment

Because successful communication is essential to learning in an online course, instructors and instructional designers need to foster a respectful, welcoming environment and to prepare for potential...

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Reading Circles Get Students to Do the Reading

In my course, the required reading is intensive and extensive. Students must read multiple texts that range across disciplines, genres, history, and culture. The goal of this interdisciplinary course...

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Five Pedagogical Practices to Improve Your Online Course

Because online courses have fewer opportunities for the spontaneous, real-time exchanges of the face-to-face classroom, online instruction requires a deliberate approach to design and facilitation. As...

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Letting the Students Lead

The joy of discussion as a class activity is starting it up and seeing where it goes. Although some of the same themes come up in every discussion, how they emerge and the connections they raise vary...

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Evaluating Online Discussions

Discussions in class and online are not the same. When a comment is keyed in, more time can be involved in deciding what will be said. Online comments have more permanence. They can be read more than...

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The Art of Asking Questions

At one time or another, most of us have been disappointed by the caliber of the questions students ask in class, online, or in the office. Many of them are such mundane questions: “Will material from...

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Using Self-Determination Theory to Improve Online Learner Motivation

According to self-determination theory, a theory developed by Deci and Ryan, three basic psychological needs affect motivation: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Susan Epps, associate professor of...

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Assessing Team Members

Teachers who use group work frequently incorporate some sort of peer assessment activity as a means of encouraging productive interactions within the group. If part of the grade for the group work...

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Online Learning 2.0: Turn Your Students into Teachers

Teaching as learningInstead of encouraging students to “give back to the teacher what the teacher wants,” students must truly understand the material in order to synthesize it into a coherent teaching...

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How to Help Students Improve Their Note-Taking Skills

Students love it when teachers provide class notes—the more complete the set, the better. Students want the teacher’s notes online because it’s convenient, they’re readable, well organized, and relieve...

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Online Learning 2.0: Easy Animation for Teaching

Why animation?The first thing I look for when I visit a new website is a short video describing what the organization or person does. If I don’t see a video, I consider the site amateurish.Online...

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The Power of We

Additional Authors: Caitlin Greatrex and Josh KleinBeing a college professor sometimes feels lonely. Yes, we have colleagues in our departments and elsewhere on campus, students in our classrooms, and...

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Can New Technologies Increase Interaction in Online Education?

There are three types of interaction in online courses: learner-to-content, learner-to-instructor, and learner-to-learner. Each contributes to student retention and motivation. This article elaborates...

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Helping Students More Accurately Assess Their Performance

Are your students overly optimistic about their course grades? It is the time of the semester when reality starts sinking in, although many students in trouble don’t express surprise or concern until...

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Monitor Nonverbal Communication to Know When and How to Intervene in the...

In the face-to-face classroom, nonverbal communication such as facial expressions, body posture, eye contact, gestures, and attendance are often used to gauge students’ engagement and understanding....

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Keeping Students on Board with Concept Maps

The benefits of concept maps are well established. They encourage students to organize knowledge and do so in ways meaningful to them. They help students sort out, prioritize, and understand...

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