Icebreakers can help promote the important social component of online learning. Common icebreakers have students share information about themselves with the idea of creating a bit of conversation and perhaps provide fodder for course-related discussions ...
Autonomy is a key ingredient of motivation. Students are motivated by the ability to choose how they accomplish their learning goals. However, not all students are used to having autonomy, which is why it's important ...
A well-organized syllabus is essential for any online course, particularly large online courses. Peggy Semingson, associate professor of literacy studies at the University of Texas at Arlington, teaches online courses to groups of up to ...
New learning technologies offer many potential benefits to online learners, but these same technologies can create an additional burden for students who lack the requisite digital literacies to use them effectively. The need to learn ...
How much of an online course should be standardized? It's a question that has important implications for institutions, instructors, and students in the online space. In an interview with Online Classroom, Melanie Kasparian, Online Experiential ...
Central Washington University offers an information technology administrative management program in an online format aimed at place- and time-bound working adults. The following are three ways the program works to improve student retention.
A common approach to generating discussion in an online course is to have students post a response to a prompt and then respond to the posts of several of their classmates. While this approach can ...
Students enter online courses with various levels of knowledge, experience, needs, and expectations. It's important to get a sense of what students already know in order to provide the appropriate levels of support and challenge.
Online course content should be challenging, but the course itself should be straightforward and include “purposeful redundancy” to aid navigation and provide multiple ways to learn, says Michelle Manganaro, who teaches online education and communications ...
Incivility in an online course can reduce student satisfaction and negatively affect retention. This is why it's important to understand what causes it, design your course to minimize it, and know what to do when ...