Comment on Kimberly Szadek's post: I think your ninth graders will enjoy making their biographies in a tool like FlipGrid. Learners usually are more invested in a learning task when there is a sense of ownership and authentic expression. Getting to know each other builds community in the class. It humanizes and personalizes the learning experience (especially for online learners) when you know that your instructor and peers are real people who live in a real place and have real emotions, feelings, joys, sorrow, hobbies, skills, aspirations, and goals just like you do. :) 

Comment on Andrew Gradall's post: I agree Andrew! The instructor can set the pace for discussion posting by modeling the types of interaction and depth of content they desire for the discussion. As long as they don't dominate it, they will project a guiding presence that will more than likely encourage students to take part in the discussion and put forth more effort to craft a post that keeps the conversation going strong.

Using rubrics help student know what is expected. This also gives real time feed back on something they turned in so they know what to improve on. It is not helpful to say, "Try harder for an A", there is no actionable items the student can work on. Even saying nice job or good point on their contributions to conversations can help them with their confidence in the class. 

There are some misconceptions about active learning like the instructor will loose control over the class or that they should not make the class entertainment. However, this has been shown to have the best engagement from students and gives everyone other ways to remember things since everyone learns differently. While it is ultimately up to the student to complete their work and to learn the material, by offering class in different formats it gives the student more opportunities to learn.

Setting a time for the course each day or week rather than accessing each time a student makes a post or submits graded items. So, having a set time in a set environment will better enhance the teaching component. 

Projecting your presence in an online course is vital to your student's success in the course and their confidence in you as an instructor. Unlike in face-to-face courses where you can see and interact with your students, an online course can be isolating for students at a distance. Visible online presence leads to regular and substantive interactions beyond just popping in the course to grade assignments and post new content. Instructors gain trust and interest by projecting their authority and developing authentic relationships with their students. This along with consistently projecting their presence strengthens the connection and leads to higher… >>>

One thing that has really stood out to me so far is the idea that feedback should be focused on improving student learning, rather than explaining or defending the grade. The rubric already does the work of justifying the grade, so our comments should really be used to help students grow and understand how to improve.

I also found it meaningful to think about how important it is to connect feedback directly to the assignment objectives and course learning outcomes. When students can see that connection, it gives more purpose to the feedback and helps them understand the “why” behind… >>>

Comment on Aimee Green's post: 

Hi Aimee! I once had an online instructor who was new to the LMS we were using and hadn't received any training from the instructional support team at the college. As a result, he created the entire course using discussion posts because he said he didn't know how to use anything else! Yikes! I can't remember exactly what the situation was, but I think he was new to online teaching and had been given a teaching assignment at the last minute and just had to roll with it. As someone who provides instructional design… >>>

Comment on Luis Serrano Tamayo's post: 

Hi Luis! You are right about the way forums help us with the co-construction of knowledge. We are actually modeling the type of interactions that we desire for our students. There is always something we can learn from our peers, no matter how much experience we have. One of the lessons in this section stated that different instructors are likely to take different approaches to teach the same course goals. This is because we all have a different way of seeing things, based on our life and professional experiences. Forums allow us to… >>>