April, 2006

Online Classroom - April, 2006 - Full Issue PDF
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Online Teaching Got Me Out of the Box
By Carolyn Speer Schmidt, PhD
For 13 years, I taught college students in a traditional classroom. The face-to-face discussion was rewarding, and I had no plans to give it up. But life intervened. Now I find myself living several hundred miles away from the university I called home and teaching exclusively online. Although I was concerned that making the transition from chalk dust to pixels would mean having less connection to my students, and perhaps less academic freedom, I knew I could be a competent online instructor.

Tips from the Pros
Jonathan P. Mathews, assistant professor of energy and geo-environmental engineering at Penn State University, teaches a high-enrollment (more than 400 students) general education online course, Energy and the Environment. Although he has two teaching assistants, the logistics of managing such a large number of students would be overwhelming without implementing the following course design/management ideas.

Multiple Choice Question Types (Assessments, Part 4)
By Patti Shank, PhD, CPT
Last month I described strategies for building better multiple choice tests. Well-written multiple choice tests require skill (gained with knowledge and practice), but the effort is well worth the end results. Poorly written tests can be extremely problematic for you, your learners, and your institution. In addition to not assessing the right things and potentially damaging learners, poorly written multiple choice tests for online learners add additional frustrations and challenges to the typical ones they already face.

So…What’s the Future for Online Education?
By Errol Craig Sull, M.A.
To many students and would-be students who have yet to experience them, online colleges are sometimes viewed with a combination of suspicion and distrust—and occasional newspaper headlines talking about some CEO who, it was learned, received his or her advanced degree at an online “paper mill” do not help these impressions. And many in traditional academic institutions—including those who offer online courses—continue to quickly turn their noses up at online colleges, believing that any for-profit online college could not possibly offer the same quality education that they can.

Posting Handouts Online Introduced Instructor to Online Learning Possibilities
Like many instructors who venture into the online classroom, Brenda Rambo, assistant professor of psychology at Middle Tennessee State University, began gradually by enhancing her courses with Web content. Her initial motivation was to provide her students with online handouts, which would eliminate the hassle and expense of making photocopies. From this simple beginning, she has progressed to offering user-friendly fully online and hybrid courses that have changed the way she teaches and the way her students learn.