While most faculty stick with the tried-and-true quiz and paper assessment strategies for their online courses, the wide range of technologies available today offers a variety of assessment options beyond the traditional forms. But what do students think of these different forms?
Synchronous meetings can be a valuable addition to otherwise asynchronous online courses. They build community and combat a student’s sense of isolation. There are a number of ways to use synchronous sessions to add value to a course.
The flipped classroom reverses the traditional teaching formula by putting the “lecture” online and using class time for engagement with the material. But many faculty trip up when trying to find activities for the face-to-face component of the class, and often end up reverting to
In today’s selfie world, photo and video sites such as Instagram have become one of the most popular ways for young people to communicate. This makes Instagram an ideal platform for increasing student understanding and engagement in online courses by having students share what they
It is easy to forget that learning is not a simple transfer of information from the head of the teacher to the head of the student. Students build knowledge in their own heads through a combination of external cues and reflection.
Gamification of learning has become a hot topic in education as of late. But instructors are understandably puzzled about how to gamify their courses. Should they just add a Jeopardy PowerPoint to one of their modules, or do something else?
Traditional academic papers often undermine motivation by failing to show students the real-life applications of their subject. But with a little thought, you can craft assignments that add pizzazz across multiple areas of study. These activities provide students with opportunities to think more critically, analyze
As faculty, it is easy for us to fall into the trap of “The Expert’s Blind Spot.” This is the well-established tendency of experts to not be able to understand the troubles of novices because the expert either never encountered the problem or has long
As online instructors, we have finally figured out that the web is a visual medium and have been replacing the long text documents that constituted our original lectures with engaging presentations that make use of images, video, and sound. But despite the shift, most of
Faculty are increasingly looking for ways for students to collaborate, not only to improve learning, but to teach collaboration skills. Teachers generally do this with in-class collaborations, but the Internet opens up a wider world of collaboration possibilities between classes. Kristin Novotny, a core division
