I have been teaching an online course for almost three years. I wish I'd taken this course earlier! It would have provided a foundation for best practices. It's not too late though. I especially appreciated some very practical steps to take: creating rubrics for discussion forums, calling for short biographies the first day of class and sending a personalized e-mail to each student by the end of the week.
The course was also timely in that it addresses the issue of "the angry student". I just encountered one a few days ago! I dealt with it reasonably, thanks to my able supervisors on several levels, but I appreciate the descriptions of different behaviors of students who are "difficult".
