November 2004

Full November 2004 issue of Online Classroom in PDF format
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Using Multimedia to Trigger Threaded Discussions
Multimedia can be an excellent way to give students a break from static, text-heavy web pages and to appeal to different learning style preferences, but did you ever consider using multimedia in your online courses to trigger threaded discussions?

Tips from the Pros
Many instructors use ice breakers to acclimate students to the online classroom. Ice breakers can also be helpful in assessing prior knowledge, fostering group unity, introducing new topics within the course, and introducing tools within the online learning environment.

Self-Assessment Techniques Help Students Become Self-Directed Learners
If one of the goals of your online course is to encourage students to become self-directed learners, you need to provide them with tools and techniques to help them identify their learning goals and measure their progress, says Jan Droegkamp, professor of liberal studies/individual option at the University of Illinois-Springfield.

Online MBA Orientation Program: Some Best Practices
By Kam Jugdev, Ph.D., PMP and Maureen Hutchison
The online executive MBA program at Athabasca University’s Centre for Innovative Management is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2004. In that time, we have acquired an excellent understanding of helpful practices for delivering an online, distance education program, and we are continually learning with each new intake of MBA students.

Online Team Teaching Enriches Instruction, Instructors
When Michael Sullivan, education technology professor at the University of Texas-Brownsville, began developing an online instructional design course as part of the UTB’s educational technology master’s degree, he enlisted the help of Kathy Schmidt, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Texas-Austin. “It was pretty apparent by the dialogue we were having that our disparate viewpoints were really enriching my understanding of instructional design, and I was hoping that if we could share our ongoing dialog with students, they’d get a lot more out of the course,” Sullivan says.

Linking Online Courses for Interdisciplinary Learning
Linking courses from more than one discipline can give students a broader, more realistic understanding of a topic than they might get in separate courses. It’s an idea that has been successful in face-to-face courses and one that can work online as well.