Teaching Strategies and Techniques

Recently, it was reported that some schools’ open (read: free) online courses would give credits to students who took them—and in some cases these courses have no instructors. There are also online courses in which the participants merely follow the syllabus, take a few tests,

Through regular student feedback, Jennifer Luzar, associate professor of language arts at Northwood University, has compiled the following things students want in their online courses and ways that she has adapted her instruction accordingly.

Feedback from students should not wait until the end of the course. Jennifer Luzar, associate professor of language arts at Northwood University, recommends surveying students throughout an online course to know how well you’re doing and how you might improve it.

In small online courses, instructors have the luxury of participating in frequent personal interactions with students in online discussions. But doing this with more than 15 students can be difficult. Fortunately, there are ways to maintain instructor presence and participation in online discussions without becoming

How nice it is when we teach an online course from beginning to end, with no errors, no problems, and no emergencies! Ah, but this is the stuff of fiction, for in reality each online instructor will encounter difficulties in his or her course. How

Because online courses have fewer opportunities for the spontaneous, real-time exchanges of the face-to-face classroom, online instruction requires a deliberate approach to design and facilitation. As Bethany Simunich says, “Online, learning doesn’t happen by chance.” In an interview with Online Classroom, Simunich, associate director of

Consideration of convenience and flexibility typically leads instructors and instructional designers to favor asynchronous over synchronous learning. But given the potential benefits of synchronous communication, perhaps it’s time to rethink the 100 percent asynchronous course.