Researchers Daniel Smith and Thomas Valentine begin by making an important point. At two-year colleges “the classroom serves as the epicenter of involvement.” (p. 134) The same could be said for commuter campuses as well. Students who attend two-year colleges often do so part- time
When we talk about teaching effectiveness, it’s usually in the context of evaluation. Student ratings are frequently described as measures of teaching effectiveness, and that makes our understanding of the term important. Researcher Leslie Layne wondered whether students and teachers define the term similarly. If
Because research into the effects of test-item order on exam performance has produced equivocal results, the editor recently suggested that “it is not a bad idea for instructors to systematically order test items and analyze the results to see how test-item order might be affecting
Screen after screen of text is what Kevin Gumienny refers to as “crappy” learning. Gumienny, curriculum coordinator for the Texas A & M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX), says that there are some valid reasons for using this type of instructional design—it’s easy to create and
Last fall, we did a survey of our top faculty to gather their best tips for teaching online. We observed that many of our top-tier faculty led very busy professional lives—counseling a full load of clients each week, teaching several classes for Liberty University Online,
Two researchers offer data helpful in answering the assessment question. They decided to take a look at a collection of rubrics being used to assess online discussions. They analyzed 50 rubrics they found online by using various search engines and keywords. All the rubrics in
Faculty members in the business department at Brigham Young University-Idaho were skeptical about the prospect of creating a totally asynchronous online business management program. The use of case studies was the biggest sticking point. Case studies are an integral component of the business management curriculum.
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,
When Scotty Dunlap, assistant professor of safety, security, and emergency management at Eastern Kentucky University, surveyed his students about group work at the outset of an online graduate-level course on auditing, they unanimously gave it low ratings. Asked the same question at the end of
Most faculty are familiar with the strategy: students are allowed to bring into the exam a card or sheet of paper that they’ve prepared beforehand and that contains information they think might help them answer exam questions. I became convinced of the strategy’s
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