Every now and again I come across a quote that follows me around for the rest of the day, if not several days. That happened this week and here’s the quote, “I see myself as a learner first, thus I create my classes with learners,
Tests and quizzes are often the primary means of assessing online learner performance; however, as Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt, online instructors and coauthors of numerous online learning books, including Lessons from the Virtual Classroom: The Realities of Online Teaching (2013), point out, there are
One of the challenges of preventing student plagiarism is that students often are not entirely clear on what constitutes plagiarism, so educating them about plagiarism is an important step.
The most important lesson we can teach our students is that college is just part of their lifelong learning journey, and most of their intellectual growth will happen after college. This means forming a “personal learning environment” (PLE) that will preserve, organize, and harness the
The dynamics involved in each online student group working toward its goal of an A-worthy project are complex. So many components must mesh smoothly, and because of this each group is ripe for any number of problems. If the instructor does not address these problems
There are three types of interaction in online courses: learner-to-content, learner-to-instructor, and learner-to-learner. Each contributes to student retention and motivation. This article elaborates on these types of interaction and suggests which technologies can facilitate each type of interaction.
Dead ideas that limit teaching and learning—that was the topic of Professor Diane Pike’s plenary session at the recent Teaching Professor Conference. There’s a tyranny associated with dead ideas. They limit and constrain our thinking, and can lead us in the wrong direction. An idea
Group work and teamwork. In college courses the terms refer to students working together, often on an assignment or an activity. Group work is the more neutral term, whereas teamwork implies something about how the students are working together. And although teamwork is easy to
Here’s a great story. A graduate student is attending a lecture being given by one of her intellectual heroes, the Brazilian educator and theorist Paulo Freire. She takes notes furiously, trying to capture as many of his words as possible. Seeing that she is keenly
For some time now my good friend and colleague Larry Spence and I have been discussing the role of questions in the college classroom. The conversation started with concerns over the quantity and quality of questions students ask—those earnest questions about what’s going to be
