November, 2006

Online Classroom - November, 2006 - Full Issue PDF
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Using Information Mapping to Develop Online Courses
Norma Grassini-Komara, an instructional designer at Moraine Valley Community College, uses Information Mapping®—a three-step process that includes analyzing, organizing, and presenting content to help learners better understand complex information and to improve student satisfaction with the online learning experience.

Tips from the Pros: 4 Collaborative Online Teaching Strategies
Team teaching can be an excellent way of providing students with different perspectives on course content, but team teaching poses challenges that teaching individually does not. Among these is cooperatively creating the course and coordinating facilitation and communication with students.

How Does a Virtual Field Trip Compare to the Real Thing?
Kim Holland, of the Teaching Support Centre at University of Western Ontario, created a virtual field trip for his introductory geography course to simulate the experience for students with disabilities who could not traverse the terrain of the actual field trip and for those who missed the actual field trip due to illness or scheduling conflicts.

How to Promote Collaborative Active Online Learning
Jan Engle, coordinator of instruction development at Governors State University, uses group work in her online courses with an initial emphasis on process and, as a course progresses, a growing emphasis on product.

Activities 101: New Tools for Collaboration, Part 2
By Patti Shank, PhD, CPT
In the last few articles, I have discussed some of the new tools that can be used for collaborative activities in online and blended courses and the benefits that can accrue from these activities. These new tools are good news for online instruction, because typical online collaboration tools such as discussion forums simply don’t fit the bill for the multitude of collaborative activities that can benefit instruction and learning.

Playing Catch-up: How to Come Out From Behind When an “Unexpected” Broadsides Your Efforts
By Errol Craig Sull
Just recently, my hometown—Buffalo, N.Y.—was hit with a somewhat “perfect storm”: On October 12 and 13, 22 inches of wet snow fell, coming to rest on thousands of limbs and branches that were still in the midst of their autumnal leaf display. The result: nearly 400,000 folks lost power; all Internet connectivity and landline phone service were gone for many of these people; and street upon street was blocked off by downed power lines and whole trees or tree limbs. For me, this meant no use of the Internet (desktop or wireless) nor driving to another location for computer use—for five days. What follows are my guidelines for dealing with such unexpected events.