Travis Dettmer

Preparation, be on time, dress the part, motivate, be enthusiastic, know your material, engage the students. 

The use of technology and a variety of assessment techniques will keep students engaged and you apprised of student grasp of the materials. 

Write objectives and read them back to yourself.  Do they answer A,B,C,D?  Are they measurable? Are they specific?  Do they meet the intent of student learning? 

Lesson plans should be comprehensive and well-researched w/ documented sources of information covered.  Continually refine the plan adding fresh relevance.  The better documented a lesson plan is the better equipped it can be for anyone else who needs to teach the lesson. 

Regardless of knowledge level of the students, always incorporate a "hook" to introduce the subject matter and get the students interested.  This could an engaging introductory video, a surprise quiz to gauge knowledge, or a hands-on activity. Then engage the students in a variety of ways to keep the lesson moving, leaving ample time for questions and student input. 

Designing tests and assessments takes a lot of deliberate thought to be sure we are testing the breadth of the learning objectives and written with complete clarity for the students. 

Continuous assessment enables the best learning outcomes for students.  Interesting the use of "post-Enron days" in the ethics portion.  My guess is for the majority of people these days taking this online course won't know much about Enron. 

I'm a fan of progressive questioning in the Socratic style to tease out the learning objectives using as much student contribution as possible. 

One approach I've found helpful is to start with my own preferred learning style and build around it by incorporating aspects to deliberately touch on the other learning styles.