Motivation and engagement are important elements of an online course. This newsletter has featured many tips on how to improve student motivation and engagement. Here are a few more from a recent Magna Online Seminar led by Barbi Honeycutt, founder of Flip It Consulting.
Managing instructor presence—students’ perceptions of how instructors interact with them and guide their learning during a course—is the key to overcoming frustration. It’s not unusual for instructors and students to have widely different perceptions of instructor presence during the same course.
A wise teacher once told me that half of college success is just being organized, and I’m sure the same is true for any work. Yet we provide precious little guidance to students on this critical life skill. Lack of organization leads to students who
With today’s technologically savvy student, the online learning environment should be an effective platform for course delivery. And it is—for some. But attrition rates for online courses remain high. How is it possible to have a nation of higher-education students who understand how to operate
I just read a couple of interesting studies exploring the relationship between the content in texts and the content covered by the teacher. The analysis was of introductory psychology courses and the conclusion not terribly surprising. The lecture and textbook material corresponded closely. If the
Whether it’s a student who is texting during class, an online student who makes minimal comments to the discussion board, or a teacher who marches nonstop through mountains of material, the learning environment is defined by a combination of individual behaviors, and everybody contributes to
Preparing one of the plenary sessions for the recent Teaching Professor Conference provided me the opportunity to do some more work on questions, which if you’re a regular reader of this blog you will recognize as an ongoing interest of mine for more than a
Someone sought me out recently to say that she’d tried something I had recommended and it didn’t work. “You need to stop recommending that to people,” she told me. “How many times did you try it?” I asked. “Once and the students hated it,” she
As college faculty, we put tremendous pressure on ourselves to talk. We want to cover the course content and thoroughly explain our assignments. We want to sound smart, share what we know, and communicate convincingly about the work of our disciplines. Our students assume we
Looking for an intervention that improves team functioning on group projects? Consider team charters. “A team charter is introduced to team members upon formation and provides the team the opportunity to discuss and, ultimately, agree on members’ expectations related to behavior, meeting management and the
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