About me
Christina Guest
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Discussion Comment
Last semester my college's system completely crashed. Fortunately I had kept hard copy grades for all of my students. (The system was eventually able to recover the information, but I was able to have all my final grades turned in on time because I had the back up hard copies.)
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The composition of discussion forum questions is extremely important when trying to engage students. The discussions have to be easily understood while at the same time broad enough to allow many different perspectives.
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I've found one of the most frustrating aspects of grading online discussion comments is getting the students to elaborate responses to include more than, "I completely agree" or "good point".
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I learned early in my online teaching career that it is imperative to have hard deadlines for assignments. My second semester teaching I had 34 students in my communications class. Each week students had to complete three assignments as well as participate in three discussion boards. Assuming I could structure the homework deadlines similar to my campus classes I allowed students to hand in assignments late but they received a two percent grade deduction. The morning before I had to have all assignments graded I logged on to find I had 130 assignments waiting to be graded. Needless to say… >>>
Discussion Comment
One of the biggest assets an instructor can have is flexibility. At least once a week a form of technology that I want to use in the classroom is unavailable, broken or for whatever reason I'm not able to access it. I always have to be sure to have a back up plan to the technology that I want to integrate into my classroom.
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Because I teach general education courses it is very important for me to ensure the students understand what they will be taking away from my course, and why it's important for them to learn the material provided. Many don't see the value of general education courses so it's my job to show them.
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Because I provide a lot information in my lesson plans, I've found that highlighting the main points make it easier for me to quickly remember what I'm transitioning to in the classroom.
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Because my classes are four hours long, it's very important for me to plan a lot of extra material for each session. I never know how discussion will go each day so I have to make sure I have enough in my lesson plan to fill the four hours. I generally structure my classes so that the first half of the class is lecture, and the second is filled with activities that apply the material covered in the lecture. This way students can actively participate in their own learning.
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I do a lot of group work in my courses that require critical thinking skills. Students are presented with various scenarios in which they have to determine the best solution to the problem. I've found that students seem to learn a great deal simply by listening to the experiences of other group members, and their ultimate conclusions are almost always much more effective when they come up with solutions as a group rather than individually.
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At the end of every term I hand out a course survey to students, in addition to the one distributed by my university. I've found it very helpful when planning the course for the following term. I enjoy reading about what students say they learned or took away from the course and I benefit from reading about what concepts they struggled with. I would become very bored with my profession if I didn't adapt/update the course each term.
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