Teaching Online: Tips and Tricks Part 1
There are many ways to reach teaching success in an online class. This series of articles will look at some tips and tricks to help you engage your students, increase learning, and reduce instructor stress.
There is a common misconception in teaching online that an instructor can take their face to face materials, put them online, and have success equal to that of their face to face class. However, there are some key factors to the success of an online course such as: creating a sense of community, providing opportunity for collaboration, establishing frequent and consistent deadlines for work, and providing contact with the instructor. More (link to the following paragraphs)
A sense of community:
When students arrive in their traditional classroom they are automatically provided with a community with whom they are learning. In an online environment it is important to create a similar community in order to garner and keep student interest in the course. This can be done by creating a discussion board for students to introduce themselves to each other, holding synchronous class meetings using tools such as Elluminate, and by providing multiple opportunities for students to collaborate with one another.
Opportunity for collaboration:
Collaboration is essential to the success of an online course. Not only does collaboration help create a sense of community, but it adds diversity to class activities, ensures student participation, and allows students to express themselves as they would in a traditional classroom. Collaboration can be offered through discussion boards, group activities and projects, peer-evaluation, and breakout room sessions in Elluminate.
Opportunity for collaboration:
Collaboration is essential to the success of an online course. Not only does collaboration help create a sense of community, but it adds diversity to class activities, ensures student participation, and allows students to express themselves as they would in a traditional classroom. Collaboration can be offered through discussion boards, group activities and projects, peer-evaluation, and breakout room sessions in Elluminate.
Frequent and consistent deadlines for work:
Due to the asynchronous nature of online learning, it is important to give students frequent and consistent deadlines for work. Consistency in deadlines, such as requiring students to finish their discussion board posts by 5:00pm of every Monday, approximates deadlines that would occur in a face to face classroom. Establishing frequent deadlines ensures that students are participating in class activities on a consistent basis.
Contact with the instructor:
Providing contact with the instructor in an online classroom is arguably more difficult than in a face to face classroom. However, the perception of contact with the instructor is crucial to student success. An instructor can increase this perception by creating a FAQ discussion board, holding virtual office hours, posing questions and comments to student posts in discussion boards, holding synchronous class meetings using Elluminate or other tools, using the Announcements tool in E-Learning, and by responding quickly to student query’s that are not answerable in a whole-class discussion board forum.
In the second part of this article we will focus on how to reduce the work load on the part of the instructor in an online course. For more information on the tools suggested in this article visit the CITT Tools and Techniques Toolbox.
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Tags: Teaching Online
Posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008.