While written assessments are the most common tool for measuring learning today, the earliest form of assessment was oral. The Socratic dialectic used by the ancient Greeks, and still used today in Oxford’s tutorial system, combined learning and assessments through a conversation with the student.
Technology has allowed online educators to upgrade their teaching material from pages of text to media formats with images, videos, and interactions. But the syllabus generally remains a text-only document. Now some educators are working to bring the syllabus in line with the rest of
“Presence” has become a major buzzword in online teaching circles. Authors and speakers repeatedly champion methods and technologies meant to improve instructor presence in the online classroom. But what types of activities best improve instructor presence in students’ eyes, and what do they value? Sharon
Feedback on performance has proven to be one of the most important influences on learning, but students consistently report that they want and need far more feedback than they get from their instructors (Hattie & Zierer, 2019). One of the main reasons for this relates
The asynchronous discussion forum greatly improved the breadth and depth of discussion that is possible in a class. Whereas face-to-face class discussion is mostly students talking to the instructor, the LMS discussion forum facilitated student conversations with one another.
It is no surprise that students and faculty have different perspectives on what makes for a quality online class. What is surprising is how little research there is on this difference. Steele, Dyer, and Mandernach (2023) recently began filling this void with a survey that
Time management is one of the most important skills for success in higher education, especially in online classes that do not give students a set schedule for organizing their studies. For this reason, I have developed a time management program for online students that
The flipped class is one of the hottest topics in the teaching field today. In a traditional course, students get the learning content through an in-class lecture and then work with that content outside of class as homework. The problem is that if students
Faculty are forever looking for ways to improve performance, and a recent article by Xiao and Hew (2023) explores the possibility of using rewards to do so.
Artificial intelligence is quickly integrating itself into all parts of learning as a tool for both students and faculty. Now it is coming to online discussion in the form of Packback, a tool that integrates into the learning management system
