Posts Categorized: Online Teaching Resources

Social science tells us again and again that fostering a positive learning community is crucial for student success and engagement. As online instructors, our role extends beyond the transmission of knowledge to creating an environment where students feel connected, supported, and motivated. Below, we’ll explore effective strategies for cultivating a positive online learning community and… Read more »

Online programs recruit students from all over the globe – a wonderful thing, as the diversity of thought, experience, background, and culture lends itself to enriching classroom discussion. Embracing a diverse student population requires mindful teaching, and an eye toward ensuring that students of all backgrounds, abilities, and experience are set up for success. Thus, inclusive… Read more »

Online classrooms – now a mainstay in higher education – provide students and educators with unique opportunities to learn-by-collaboration. One powerful tool that fosters active engagement and critical thinking in virtual classrooms is well-crafted discussion prompts. By designing thoughtful and stimulating prompts, educators can create vibrant and dynamic online discussions that enhance the learning experience for… Read more »

Asynchronous online classrooms offer a flexible and convenient learning experience for diverse groups of learners. While you might think that the absence of real-time interaction can pose a challenge in establishing a sense of community among students and instructors, the asynchronous learning environment is rife with opportunities to community-build. Creating a supportive and connected learning environment… Read more »

Experience and research have shown us time and time again that the critical component of any successful online course is student engagement. The more students are actively involved in their online course work, the better they perform, the more enjoyable they find the course, and the more likely they are to continue on to graduation…. Read more »

I once sat through a new faculty hire orientation where one of the speakers spoke at length about test integrity, emphasizing how we should prohibit students from working on exams with each other (the standard exam instructions at this school say that if the student is caught doing so, they will be reported to the… Read more »

When you are about to teach an online course, and you have been told that you need to choose a textbook, feeling pressure is understandable. For students, a textbook is a major purchase, and usually an expensive one, and so your decision has consequence. If your online course is asynchronous, the textbook is going to… Read more »

When faced with literally hundreds of college courses, all of which make a pitch for the student’s attention (and eventually their attendance), how does a student choose which course to take? Course descriptions. Remember course catalogs when you were in college? You’d “shop” through them and see what struck you as interesting, pertinent, or just… Read more »

Think back to when you were enrolled in college. How long were your courses in terms of weeks and hours spent in the classroom? Chances are, if your college education was traditional—which is to say, typical—you likely enrolled in semesters. If that was the case, your classes probably took about 15 weeks to complete, and… Read more »

Collaboration, Interaction, and sharing form the heart of an online course. Interaction leads to student engagement, and student engagement indicates success. If you’ve taught, or even attended, an online class of any sort, you know how strange it can seem. If you’ve even done a large-scale Zoom meeting—and who hasn’t, at this point?—you know that… Read more »