I have been teaching for the past nine years and have a good understanding of the benefits in taking these online courses. I feel they reinforce the things I do well and help to provide insight into areas I can improve upon. My question is, what are some ways to motivate other instructors to buy into the same thought process?

I find it helpful (and necessary) to review and "tweak" my syllabus addendum each term as I get to know the habits of students. This serves to clarify concerns before they occur, both on my part and on the part of the student.

When I started teaching in a small school in Berlin, the other teachers and I would always get up from our chairs in the break room right before classes started and yell, "It's showtime!" The idea was, our students were mostly adults who had just finished a long day at work, barely had time to eat dinner (if that), drove through traffic and were pretty tired, hungry and grumpy. Our job was to make them glad they made the effort to show up. We had enthusiasm, smiles, quick fun activities right off the bat and then jumped right into the lessons. Our students suddenly caught a second wind and there would be laughter, smiles and eager questions. To this day, I always hear a voice in the back of my head yell, "It's showtime!" whenever I bound into a classroom. We sometimes take it for granted that students show up in our classrooms - I think it is very important that you make them WANT to show up and make every start of every class be dynamic. Oh, and don't even think about sitting down at your desk for at least the first 15 minutes...walk around, go to the students, stand in the back of the room, keep moving, don't stop. I sometimes teach an entire class and never once sit at my desk! Trust me - try this approach and watch what happens BTW, my student retention rate has always surpassed every expectation, no matter where I have taught.

You must look at the needs of the students as well as the coarse content to find out what maywork in the classroom.

You need to be direct and print everything out for the student so that they have a reference. I find that you need to be very direct about what you are wanting them to get out of the class and expectations.

What strategies have you implemented for making a course’s content relevant and applicable to the learning needs of students? I try to use case studies and relevant local news to show how the material is relevant to the students everyday life.

Previous management was very clear regarding prepare for anything. Having enough materials if copies not made, technology failures and possible lack of enthusiasm. This has helped through the years. Similar to a restaurant; think on your feet.

While we should strive to cover everything in the syllabus, how much is "too much"? Will students take the time to review something more than 2 pages?

Often times I find it difficult to motivate online students. I try to emit enthusiasm through emails and discussion boards, but sometimes it seems like such a small percentage of the class "hears" me. Since I don't often get to see their feedback in the form of facial expression, or body language, I find myself calling students to build a rapport. Since I teach both residential and online I do my best at making the quality of education equal and setting the "bar" the same. However, with such different formats, they both have unique challenges. Colleen Norgren

My wife has her PhD in educational psychology and always gives me advice to improve my teaching. One of her easiest suggestions concerns passing out the syllabus. She never passes out the syllabus first; too boring. Rather, she piques the students' curiosity by presenting some particularly interesting material first. Only later does she finally pass out the syllabus. This way, it gets the course off on a positive note...

In the area of planning it is important to take into consideration everything that can go wrong in a class room and have a backup. Be prepared if your powerpoint projector doesn't work or if the video you just viewed doesn't work. Electricity goes out or bulbs burn out, speakers don't show or you take more or less time to go over a subject. Always think ahead. Always keep your calm and have a backup plan.

With my math classes, I have found that students generally come into class with very polarized views of the subject. In their prior education the have either found that they enjoy the topic and learning additional techniques and methods or they have struggled with the topic and have determined that they really will have no practical application for the material we are going to be covering. In order to keep the entire class engaged, I find the Motivator role of the instructor very important. Within this role it is important to engage the students who begin the class with a self-induced barrier to really engaging in the class for fear of failure ("This material isn't really useful to me" is a clear signal that someone has struggled with it in the past and is rationalizing). Keeping the tone of the class "light" and acknowledging the progress students are making as well as giving examples in their everyday lives that the concepts can be applied really seems to help dissolve the "distancing" some students do at the start of a quarter.

Teaching for the first time I am looking for some resources on good icebreakers, any suggestions?

A few courses I teach don't have any formal exams. The students basically are taught how to use the software applications, have tons of hands-on learning in the class, then construct a midterm and final project of what was learned. I used to give thousands of sheets of papers of handouts with keyboard commands and make them take a test but found it really didn't help them learn the application. Constant reinforcement in the class, asking questions, quizzing students on the fly, and getting excellent high quality projects out of them in the end I found was a good approach. After a year, the students may have forgotten many of the keyboard commands, but knew how to use the applications with ease. It is a matter of constant practice. Does anyone not have formal exams in any of their classes?

Do not be afraid to ask other instructors in your department for input, especially is one is not as experienced as another instructor.

I do realize we are to challenge the students in a class and have them think outside the box. However, numerous times I have seen Multiple Choice exams with "Trick Questions!" The questions are so close to the correct answer or could be swayed as a correct answer, yet the student fails, falls behind and becomes discouraged. Seems like some testing is more about trying to fool the student than to just directly give an honest and straight foward evaluation. Susan, how do you deal with this issue?

I like to engage the students in conversation about the industry of my profession. They ask "real" questions concerning working in the field, then I relate those specific questions to the topic we are working on. When real life situations are in question, it gets the student motivated to ask more questions.

I disagree with the order of things to do on the first day of class as given on the first slide of the activity for this module. I agree that introducing myself is the first thing but I like to take attendence second, handout the course syllabus third, then discuss my accessibility after that. I try to get students active and involved as soon as possible when the class begins. I have used techniques like leaving the door open and calling on a student, asking his or her name, then asking that student to please close the door. I do the same or something similar for passing out the syllabus.

After completing this module, I realize that I have been doing well developing objectives but not goals. That may sound odd since objectives come from goals but what I think I have been doing is combining the two terms and generating a single output. Based on my experience from this module, I am going to breakout my course goals separately from my course objectives goig forward.

I am glad I completed this module as it reminded me that learning often takes place outside the classroom. I am going to use this motivation to do a better job of helping students connect my course content with lives outside the classroom. Perhaps rather than assigning projects that I develop alone, I would ask students to complete projects using inputs from their lives such as their jobs, homelife, or other areas of interest.