Teachers who use group work frequently incorporate some sort of peer assessment activity as a means of encouraging productive interactions within the group. If part of the grade for the group work depends on an assessment by fellow group members, students tend to take their
When Hayley Lake, lecturer at Eastern Washington University, got the opportunity to develop an online version of Survey of Alcohol & Drug Problems, a multidisciplinary course that draws students from a variety of majors and backgrounds, she knew that online discussions would be an essential
Students value their instructors’ participation in online discussions, but ongoing participation is not always an option because of the amount of work involved, particularly if there are a large number of students and/or discussions
According to self-determination theory, a theory developed by Deci and Ryan, three basic psychological needs affect motivation: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Susan Epps, associate professor of Allied Health Sciences, and Alison Barton, associate professor of Teaching and Learning, both at East Tennessee State University, have
When I was first asked to teach an online ethics class way back in 1998, I cleverly built my online lectures the semester prior by transcribing what I said in the face-to-face classroom into text after each lecture. The result was eight-to-10-page documents (single-spaced!) for
It would be great if the material offered in the online classroom—posted lectures, textbooks, other course resources, and our feedback on assignments—were enough to give each student the information necessary to understand and embrace all that is being taught. But we know this rarely happens.
One consistent question facing educators today is “What are some ways to improve student thinking?” (Houghton, 2004) As educators, we can start by examining and utilizing Bloom’s Taxonomy, which can be summarized with a few words: understanding, remembering, analyzing, applying, and creating. These terms can
Who should be taking online courses? Are online courses equally appropriate for all students? Can any content be taught in an online format or do some kinds of material lend themselves to mastery in an electronic environment? Who should be teaching these courses? These are
I often get questions about group work. Recently, the question was phrased like this: “Can students learn anything in groups?” And, like faculty sometimes do, this questioner proceeded with the answer. “I don’t think my students can. When they work in groups they have no
I got the idea for this post from the one-page “Teaching Tactics” feature in Teaching Theology and Religion. Faculty author Sara M. Koenig sets the context. “Most of us have had an experience in the classroom of a student saying something so offensive that it
