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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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.” ...
Because successful communication is essential to learning in an online course, instructors and instructional designers need to foster a respectful, welcoming environment and to prepare for potential problems that can arise, such as cyber harassment, ...
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.
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. She offers the following recommendations on getting useful feedback from students:
Keep it anonymous. The best feedback from students is anonymous. Although most learning management systems enable you to do anonymous surveys, students may not feel that their identities will be protected. To reassure students about anonymity, Luzar recommends using a survey tool such as Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com).
Survey students throughout the course. Routinely administer surveys throughout the semester—every week or two.
Ask students about new course elements. On a new assignment, you might ask, “Did you feel that the time allotted for preparation on this assignment was adequate? Did you feel that the group discussion helped you prepare for this assignment? Why or why not?”
Ask for elaboration. By asking for elaboration (why or why not?), you can determine exactly what if any issues came up, which can provide guidance on how to improve. “I can find out if the discussion board is useless or maybe they just had some lame ducks in the group. And from that I know that the next time I need to divide the groups differently or cut out the discussion component and have a phone conference or something like that,” Luzar says.