Academic Freedom and the Structured Classroom

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One of the things we discuss in our popular Fundamentals of Online Teaching  (OT 101) certificate course is how some schools will provide their online adjuncts with everything they need to teach a course up front. They will give you a syllabus and assignments and even early messages to students and all you do is plug-and-play. Other schools… Read more »

Engaging Students with Weekly Video Announcements

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Last week, we discussed three techniques to use to “invite” your students to an online discussion – a means of increasing engagement, an essential variable in online student (and teacher) success. This week, I’ll add another tip for increasing engagement, as reported on the Blackboard Blog (2016): Increase student engagement by posting weekly video announcements…. Read more »

Crafting Good Discussion Questions and Facilitating Fruitful Conversation

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We know that the discussion board is the heart of any online classroom. One of our responsibilities as online instructors is to craft and facilitate quality discussions that will help students meet the learning objectives of the course. But what types of questions make for good discussions? What are some ways to ensure that the… Read more »

Hosting Contentious Discussions Online

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As a social science online instructor, I’ve seen my fair share of politically-charged discussion board posts. Especially these days. Hotly debated topics are welcomed by a lot of in-class instructors, as it livens the classroom environment and may help drive home some important learning objectives. However, hosting such discussions online can be a bit more… Read more »

The Role of the Online Teacher’s Personality

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I just finished reading an interesting, brief article on the role of the online instructor’s personality in the virtual classroom (Oregon University, 2016, article has since been archived). The author makes the point that we’ve long understood the role of instructor personality in the face-to-face classroom (with dynamic, humorous, “fun” instructors often receiving higher student… Read more »

Ending an Online Class – Facilitating Self-Reflection

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I’m just finishing up facilitating an online Field Experience course. In this class, students who were actively engaged in supervised human service field experiences kept track of their hours, reflected on their experience in weekly journals, read relevant text materials, and participated in discussion forums all in an effort to help them get the most… Read more »