Teaching Strategies and Techniques

Many faculty members express concern that discussion in their online courses is shallow or sparse. What is it that makes meaningful dialogue so elusive in online courses? Some practices in online course design and discussion facilitation can actually encourage superficial dialogue. Faculty grading and feedback

One widespread misconception is that the Internet is a place for people to express malevolence toward one another, but that’s not true. People are generalizing from a handful of social media forums. Flaming is actually a situation-dependent activity and is isolated to places such as

One of the classes that I teach is Keyboard Skills, often referred to as “group piano.” In a face-to-face (F2F) classroom, there can be anywhere from 12-36 students, each seated at a digital keyboard. Keyboard Skills classes typically meet on the usual MWF or TR

Advances in online education have opened up a host of opportunities for the integration of multimedia to enhance the student learning experience. As technology has improved, so has access to a plethora of open educational resources, publisher supplements, and instructional content that can be integrated

Years of teaching and coaching online faculty have taught me that the move from face-to-face to online teaching brings both benefits and dangers. One benefit is that the course’s center of gravity shifts from the lecture to discussion. Whereas much of a faculty member’s time

It is unfortunate that faculty members often deliberately avoid creating competition in their courses out of fear of damaging student self-esteem or privacy considerations. Competition is one of the best ways to achieve growth. We invariably perform better when we are striving to achieve in

Despite a faculty member’s best efforts, online discussions often degenerate into students simply taking turns answering the original question rather than genuinely speaking to one another. One problem is that many students feel that it is not their place to criticize peers. This might be

Online discussion forums can produce livelier and deeper debate than is possible in face-to-face courses, but instructors are often challenged in reaching this goal. Two of the most frequently asked faculty questions concern (1) how to get students to participate in the discussion and (2)