Posts Categorized: Online Teaching Resources

When it comes to online student success, student engagement is going to naturally rank high. This is especially the case in online courses, where student behavior, motivation, and participation are critical. Trying to “stay connected” in an online class—even though the Internet is supposedly about connection—can prove daunting to many students. After all, it is… Read more »

By now, as someone interested in becoming an online adjunct professor, you are aware of the many things that need to go into doing that job well. One of the things you’ll have to do is to lead discussions, and those discussions will be led entirely online, in cyberspace. So how do you do that?… Read more »

Leading class discussions, and encouraging discussion among students, is one of the most important factors of a successful online class. In the asynchronous format, discussion will look a lot different from what we might expect of teaching—a professor behind a lectern at the head of a classroom calling on raised hands. Well, an online class… Read more »

If you’ve been looking at media reports of the life of an adjunct college instructor, you’ve no doubt been made privy to all the, well, controversy. And a lot of people will say that being an adjunct—let alone an online adjunct—just isn’t worth it. But you ought to know up front: there’s a difference with… Read more »

A lot of prospective online instructors write to me with frustration at how long it is taking to land that first job. There are many reasons – not having to do with the one’s ability, motivation, or qualifications – why it is so difficult to “break in”. I review these reasons in our newest 4-week, instructor-led course… Read more »

In 2018 we published a brief blog post titled 5 Creative Icebreaker Assignments for the Online Classroom, and to date it’s our most popular article. Which makes a lot of sense – we know from distance education research that the establishment of a vibrant, engaging, and collaborative classroom community lies at the heart of an… Read more »

Like a fine wine, online courses improve over time. With each new run of the course, an instructor is informed by what went well (and what maybe didn’t go so well) the term before. This creates efficiencies for the instructor (i.e. maybe adding in a frequently asked question into the syllabus or course start documentation… Read more »

Hello everyone! Hope you are doing well. A friend of mine and I recently completed a book chapter on anxiety and vulnerability in online students and how, as online instructors, it is part and parcel of our job to help ease (vs. exacerbate or contribute to) this anxiety. Digging into the current distance education research for this… Read more »

The start of this quarter found me recording a new set of introduction videos for my online classes. I wish I would have read this web article out of Kent State University before doing so! I could have saved myself a take or two (there were a few!). There may be a redo in my… Read more »

This week, my online abnormal psychology summer class is finishing up their mid-term exams. It is a 50-question, multiple-choice, open book test that they have had a week to complete. It is worth 5% of their final grade. That’s right – the big “mid-term exam” is only worth 5% of their final grade. Why? I myself… Read more »