Experience shows that online courses naturally lend themselves to more self-disclosure on the part of faculty and students than face-to-face courses do, possibly due to the increased quantity of discussion. Most large lecture courses have little if any discussion, and while smaller classes may have
Should students change their answers on multiple choice questions? Believe it or not, that question has been explored empirically rather at length. Is it an important enough query to merit quantitative analysis? In and of itself, maybe not, but I wonder whether it isn’t related
A virtual escape room is a learning experience that challenges students to use their knowledge to solve riddles and puzzles with the goal of escaping multiple “rooms.” Each room is a webpage, with students starting on the first page; the riddles and puzzles yield information,
Paul Feigenbaum’s article (2021) on failure changed how I think about it. I’ve written a lot about failure—advocating for it and what it contributes to learning—and Feigenbaum agrees: failure plays a powerful role in learning. He calls it “generative failure” and describes it as an
Online courses present unique challenges for both students and faculty. We’ve been teaching and learning in person for millennia, and we know a lot about how to do it well. The same is not true for online education. This modality has existed in its current
Like many faculty members, I started teaching as a subject matter expert without a formal background in education. My examination questions were either based on questions I recall from my personal experience as an undergraduate or questions provided to me by more senior faculty. Since
Student engagement—Could it be the most common phrase in the teaching-learning domains of higher education? It’s has to be in the running—essential for learning with unquestioned importance and dutifully intoned by everyone. I was intrigued by a recent account (Spiker, 2020) of a teacher’s exploration
The LMS discussion forum was once the only real option for hosting discussion in an online course. But today there are a variety of options, from videoconferencing to social media to online post-it boards. The choices can leave faculty perplexed as to which to use.
Summer is a great time to sit outside. I remember when we were building a new patio. The contractors delivered a huge pile of rocks to our front yard. Big stones. Midsize stones. Some multihued and no larger than hefty pebbles. The patio was going
Online faculty tend to assume that all student communication needs to go through the learning management system (LMS). But the LMS is not designed for the more spontaneous synchronous chat that you might get in a campus hallway or coffee shop, where someone might say,
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