November, 2007

Online Classroom, November 2007 - Full Issue PDF
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10 Tips to Extend the Shelf Life of Your Online Course
By Darren Crone
This article presents 10 common online course design pitfalls (each experienced by yours truly) and discuss solutions to assist instructional designers and instructors in building a lower-maintenance course.

Using Video Clips to Stimulate Discussion
If you’re looking to improve threaded discussions in your online courses, consider using brief video clips as discussion prompts. When carefully selected and integrated into a course, these clips can lead students to higher-order thinking and appeal to auditory and visual learning styles.

Tips from the Pros : 4 Time Management Tips
The flexibility of teaching online can blur the boundaries between work and personal time. Teresa Marie Kelly, a faculty member at Kaplan University offers the following advice on managing this aspect of teaching online.

Online Teaching Fundamentals: Media for Online Instruction: Getting Around Typical Obstacles, Part 2
By Patti Shank, PhD, CPT
Media can be extraordinarily powerful learning tools when they are selected to support instructional goals and don’t cause needless frustration or confusion. Last month, I discussed three common obstacles to using media, including limited resources and limited faculty and learner technical skills, and ways to mitigate these obstacles. This month, I’m going to continue the discussion of media obstacles and will focus on cost and infrastructure.

What Do Students Say about Online Discussion?
By Glenna L. Decker, EdD, and Sarah J. Cox
We know that the literature suggests that online collaboration and discussion are key elements to success for an online course, but what do students think about online discussion? We decided to find out by conducting an anecdotal study to see if what our students (undergraduate and graduate students in a midsize Midwest university) reported matched what the literature suggests.

Teaching Online WIth Errol: Keep Up with the Techie Side of Teaching!
By Errol Craig Sull
Because our means of teaching courses is through a computer, we are constantly tinkering, configuring, rebooting, tweaking, uploading, downloading, deleting, reviewing, and defragmenting. This, however, is not enough, for the world of the computer is one that is full of constant changes in hardware, software, accessories, and peripherals, and to remain an effective online teacher it is imperative to stay in step with these changes.