Cultivating a Positive Online Learning Community: Building Student Connections

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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 »

Inclusive Online Teaching: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners

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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 »

Leveraging Engaging Discussion Prompts in the Online Classroom

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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 »

Building Community in the Asynchronous Online Classroom

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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 »

Active Learning In the Online Classroom: Increasing Student Engagement

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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 »

How Do You Write an Online Course Description?

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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 »

How Long is a Typical Online Course?

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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 »

How to Make a Large Online Class More Interactive

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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 »