I wish I could claim this as my own, but I cannot. I want to share with you all a wonderful technique I learned from a teacher I had during graduate school. Her name was Shauna Schullo, and she passed away last year at a tragically young age from breast cancer. So whenever I explain this technique to my students. I always tell them about her and how she made me a better online instructor. The technique is called "Ask the Guru." Basically it is an extra discussion board forum that I set up in every class. I inform the students that they should post any general class questions in it. I remind them anything personal they should email me about. However I inform them that if it's a question about the class to post it there, with the question as the subject. I then also tell them to feel free to ANSWER anyone else's questions if they believe they can help. They might get to it before I do so the question might be answered faster. Ask the guru does several things: 1. It avoids me repeatedly answering the same questions over and over in emails, saving time I can spend on feedback and critiques. 2. It means the students see each other's questions and may help one another, enhancing interaction and participation. 3. The question may have already been asked by someone else, so the student gets an immediate answer. In fact I have created an "Ask the Guru FAQ" from questions and answers in past classes. I love this technique because it serves a dual purpose. It streamlines my workload since I am not having to type out answers to the same question multiple times. It also enriches the learning experience of the students by getting them to participate in helping out one another. What techniques and tips have you discovered that do either of these things, or better yet, both? Please feel free to share!

I have found that, for me, creating a course that appeals to students as well as helping them learn is really an ongoing process. I create a base file that I believe will work, and every session I add to it, or take things out that didn't work. I have also felt that, for a creative based classroom, giving live feedback on the previous "rock stars" in the group during a Live Chat helps foster discussion and tremendously boosts the drive of all students, because soon EVERYONE wants to show off their own skills and be critiqued.

My biggest hurdle for creating office hours with my students is the fact that, with 18 students all living in different parts of the country, it can be a bit of a problem finding the "right" time to best accomodate as many of the students as possible. So what has ended up happening, is I get calls late on Saturday night with questions. Sigh.

I am fortunate in the sense that I teach video game development. Fortunate that I work in an industry that is fun and interesting for the students (well ok... for me too). But the time I tried a guest lecturer ran into a bit of a snag for me. The friend that I had log in happened to be the "hero" of the gaming world for some of the students and it was very tough for me to hold them back from sounding like Chris Farley on SNL asking them things like: "Hey ... remember that game ? Yeah that was cool"

It was assumed that "face to face" might not be part of the online learning format. Not anymore! I believe any class can easily facilitate video conferencing with today's streaming capabilities. Synchronized chat can be achieved through a variety of web based programs, and the online class environment could conceivably be almost identical to the "on the ground instructor led learning." Soon we'll all be able to put on 'goggles' and be virtually placed into the online classroom.... which will save a whole lot of gas and parking fees!

In addition to teaching structured course content on-line, unstructured content and collaborative interaction are academic changes that need to be ingegrated into the educational architecture. There are a wealth of opportunities like bringing together research interests through networking contacts that can help launch ideas.

Really the question is how close to the real world eduction envirnment can the online envirnment duplicate. Any thoughts.

Incorporated into this module was the ADDIE Model without the implementation stage... why? Isn't that just as important as the other stages of this model?

I am currently going through my doctoral degree program and have two classes left. My interest is in curriculum design as well as, creating online assessments for both student and instructor. It is easy to create assessments for on-ground but could use some ideas for the online environment. Terry

Being at home or away from a watching eye,the online evaluation seems couldn't evaluate precisely the leaning. Students could easily use different refrences to get help to answer the questions.

An active, engaging instructor is very important in an onlilne discussion. If instructor do not be active in the whole discussion, and bring it back on the topic again, it easily changed to a kind of personal chatting between students.

The main reason I am taking this course is simple; I am a big believer that education must continue to evolve in order that our graduates, specifically online graduates, can compete in the constantly changing technological world we live in. GONE are the days where you could teach a programming language more than 5 years. GONE are the days when you can assume any technology you teach will last more than 3 years at the max. And to do otherwise is simply this... laziness. And what happens when we don't move forward and adapt to the constantly growing and shifting technologies? We lose students and eventually lose our jobs. So while this may seem a bit like a rant, I assure you, it is an open discussion to help others see the NEED to grow and develop not only personally, but as a team, as a school, and as a company.

The course we are developing is for training young professionals in our field and not for either academic credit or certifications. Content is important but grading not so much as just getting them to understand the concepts. Given the above, are there other methods of evaluating the knowledge obtained with out the emphasis on grades?

If allowed in the online dashboard incorporate media to engage students and encourage retention

I teach largely hands-on skills in a laboratory environment (like operating a video camera and lighting in the film style). These skill sets require substantial hands-on experience and seem difficult to translate into a realistic or high-quality online curriculum. I am interested in exploring my options, but wonder how to account for all of the different variables that my students might encounter, like various cameras with which to practice the demonstrated techniques and/or the differences between lighting equipment that the home classroom audience might encounter.

Beimg an instructor I have the couse content and the ISD ready for my course. What is the best steps to get in ready to be placed into service on-line. I do not have the skills needed to make the course "on-line".

I have never developed any on-line courses but I am very anxious to start being able to deliver my classes on-line. I teach business class and as an example Accounting is taught in three seperate classes is there a prper sequencing that I should use for making classes available on line or should I wait till they are all complete and make them available all at once. Thanks, Bernie Sarra

Do you think the nature of on-line classes leads to a tendency to multi-task in more postmodern (Attention Challenged) students? I would rather they focused on the content than playing online games while reading course notes, watching videos, animations or taking a quiz. And, more importantly, is there a way to prevent, or at least minimize it?

What are the implications for Accreditation for online classes? Will they follow the same guidelines?

Where does one draw the line between education and entertainment? I have been annotating "Amusing Ourselves to Death" for one of my classes and it occurs to me, is this post-modern? What is the difference between "engaging" students and "entertaining" them? Should we consider it one or the other, or is there a gradient and a definite point past which they can't take the information seriously? Pardon the rant-like questions, I am in the midst of writing a piece about post-modern education.