July, 2008

Online Classroom - July, 2008 - Full Issue PDF
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Suggestions for Instructors: 3 Ways to Ensure Educationally Valuable Talk in Online Discussions
By Sedef Uzuner and Ruchi Mehta
As more and more courses go online, interaction and knowledge building among students rely primarily on asynchronous threaded discussions. For something that is so central to online learning, current research and literature have provided instructors with little support as to how they can facilitate and maintain high-quality conversations among students in these learning environments.

Tips from the Pros: 4 Suggestions for Incorporating Multimedia in the Online Classroom
Karen Hardin, assistant professor of multimedia design at Cameron University, offered the following tips for creating multimedia content for online courses in a recent email interview with Online Classroom.

Using Humor to Engage Students Online
By Lisa Panagopoulos, MS CE
As online instructors, we are always looking for ways to engage students in our courses. I have found a successful technique to engage students in my Information Technology and C Programming courses by using simple concepts of humor and virtual awards.

Using Rubrics to Improve Teaching, Learning, and Retention in Distance Education
By Cindy Rippι, MBA
I have always enjoyed teaching in the classroom environment. There is something special about watching a student’s eyes light up as a new concept changes perceptions. When I first taught in the online environment, I wondered how I would communicate with students without seeing them in person.

Online Teaching Fundamentals: Using Surveys to Improve Courses, Programs, and Instruction, Part 2
By Patti Shank, PhD, CPT
Surveys are frequently used by online faculty to collect data about their online courses and instruction. They’re easy to administer (a plus), but the data gained is only as good as the design and implementation of the survey (not a minus but requires thoughtful consideration).

Teaching Online With Errol: Ensuring Student Success for a Positive Online Learning Experience
By Errol Craig Sull
It’s a mixed bag: what we pull together and offer our students to ensure not only that they have a positive online learning experience, but that they continue to embrace and use beyond the course what they learned while in the course. Each online instructor has developed his or her own approaches that best work, no doubt—but how do we really know what works and what doesn’t?