Teaching Online Learners

Public

Ask a question from your peers to help you in your professional work. Seek different points of view on a topic that interests you. Start a thought-provoking conversation about a hot, current topic. Encourage your peers to join you in the discussion, and feel free to facilitate the discussion. As a community of educators, all members of the Career Ed Lounge are empowered to act as a discussion facilitator to help us all learn from each other.

Virginia Pasqualone

A best practice for teaching repeated sections

One thing I have learned from teaching the same module over and over again is to build up a "Best Of" responses database, where I house information about common themes that students may bring up, in addition to helpful articles and/or informative websites. That way, I am not starting from Square One each week and I am able to provide a much richer response to a greater number of students in a given time period.

Paula Bordenkecher

Competing Responsibilities that Affect Attrition

Hi,

I firmly agree that in addition to other factors, competing responsibilities affect attrition in online programs. Students often underestimate the time that goes into such a program and feel that they are saving time because it is not face to face. Once they are engaged in the classes, they often become overwhelmed because of lack of time management amidst family and work responsibilities. I find that steady strateiges for time management and streams of encouragement work really well. I send messages via email, within the class announcements and even through text messages that remind them of their goals. Students also greatly appreciate periodic phone calls just to check in. It reduces their feelings of alienation and makes them feel as if they matter.

Paula Bordenkecher

Arturo Sustaita

Teaching techniques

As a seasnoed instructor I have had the pleasure of working with many other educators on many levels. I still have a difficult time as a manager in forcing instructors to chasnge their teaching techniques when I know they are not effective. I use student grades to gauge their level of comprehension. Any ideas on how I can make change occurr without insulting another seasoned intructor?

Eric Oestmann

Workload Management

Any tips on managing the increasing workload? Between grading, live sessions, meetings, trainings, continuing ed requirements, grade appeals, administrative issues, LMS problems, there is often not enough hours in the day. Suggestions welcome...

Randolph Fein

Pausing

After the brief processing time, you can ask students if they have any questions about the content just discussed. If you are on tight on time, you donâ€™t have to process the information, but you may want to consider collecting the index cards with key points or scanning their notebooks as a quick formative assessment technique that will help you know what concepts students found important. Building in opportunities to process information being learned will lead to improved academic performance!

Leslie Walther

Peer Reviews

In a course I teach we do have peer reviews of research papers. I have noticed that even with encouragement from me, many students do not participate. They would rather lose 50% of their grade because they don't want their peers to review their work. I know there are different types of learners, but how can I better show these students the positives of having their peers look at their paper? I have been teaching for years and have yet to have any students be mean or disrespectful when reviewing other student papers. Just trying to find a better approach so that everyone participates.

John Marucco

Posible Urban Myth in one of your questions?

In college I worked with a professor who researched memory. He worked with word lists and recall. He found that although there are many urban legends that say seeing with your eyes and hearing with your ears improves memory, ergo videos have to be the best way to learn, since you see and hear something together. Unfortunately that is the opposite of what we see when we run memory experiments. If you read the word dog, you are able to easily form a mental picture of a dog, showing a picture of the dog and saying to word has no measurable affect on recall. It is a misapplication of the dual coding hypothesis. Reading engages both the eyes and ears. Feedback The statement is true. Video-clips engage both the eyes and the ears. Video-clips engage both the eyes and the ear. The eyes help the ears to hear, and the ears help the eyes to see. Video-clips, therefore, contribute to multi-sensory learning. Video-clips are more effective than audio accompanied by text, audio alone, or text alone.

Leslie Walther

Instructor Involvement on Discussions

In my classes we have about 12 main discussion topics throughout the course. I have found it difficult to ensure that I'm responding to each student at least once (but usually much much more) throughout the course. With my roster being 30+ students it can be hard to respond to each student for all 12 questions. The only method I have discovered so far is making sure there aren't any students with zero responses and zoning in on them first, and keeping an excel sheet of who I have responded to which can become time consuming. However, without it, I feel like I will respond to the same students each week because there will be some students that will be first to answer or will answer with more detail etc. Has anyone come up with a better plan for ensuring all of your students get the same amount of attention during discussions?

Danny Shields

Closing the loop

How do you know when you can close the loop?

Danny Shields

Feedback

I was really impressed with the concept of video feedback for my students and will look into developing such a tool for this purpose. How do you determine the level of feedback for the students or do you just address the assignment?

Danny Shields

Emailing

Emailing is a common tool students use to communicate with instructors. How can I use this as an assessment tool and means for feedback when the student is lacking understanding for the direction of the class?

Danny Shields

Roadmaps

Do each student need a road map to follow? If the CMS has a road map for the course, can students create an additional road map to customize experience?

Danny Shields

Behavior

Behavior can be a real challenge in an on-line environment, nevertheless how can you encourage students to play nice in order to maximize engagement?

Danny Shields

Typing Skills

I continue to communicate with my students the importance of typing speed and accuracy. Should we integrate a typing program into the online content systems to encourage typing practice?

Danny Shields

Knowing what to cover in the video

When the objective is inclusivity, how do you know what will be effective in a video to increase students participation?

Danny Shields

Online readiness for the student

How can you determine studentâ€™s online readiness for successful completion of the course content? Is this determined from the effectiveness of how the course is set-up? Meaning, when does usability becomes a factor in online learning before you deploy the course?