September, 2008

Online Classroom - September, 2008 - Full Issue PDF
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Some Students Want Synchronous Learning
By Rob Kelly
Some students are reluctant to enroll in online courses, thinking that they will miss some of the social aspects of the face-to-face classroom. For these students, it makes sense to incorporate online synchronous sessions to provide some of the benefits of the face-to-face class while maintaining most of the flexibility of an asynchronous online course.

Tips From the Pros - Three Strategies for Engaging Students through Multimodal Course Design
By Rob Kelly
Like many new online instructors, Laurie Lorence, an English instructor at San Diego Community College, initially created online courses that were fairly linear and mostly text. She quickly realized that such an approach would not work for her students, particularly those in her pre-college learning courses.

Publisher Involvement: Lessons Learned and Resolutions for Responsible Textbook Selection
By Aimee J. Luebben, EdD, OTR, FAOTA
Just before one semester ended, I was notified that I would be responsible for an online core course—required by most college majors—the next semester. The bookstore wanted immediate textbook information, so I used the same ISBN as the previous semester. Weeks before the course, I realized the ISBN was a bundled textbook package that included the basic textbook with a CD-ROM plus supplements: four audio CDs and a booklet containing the publisher’s access code to the online course. Students could also opt for purchasing a used textbook with the CD-ROM, but without the audio CDs or the publisher’s access code. Because of this course, I learned many valuable lessons about publisher involvement and made a number of resolutions for responsible textbook selection in the future.

Online Teaching Fundamentals: Using Surveys to Improve Courses, Programs, and Instruction, Part 4
By Patti Shank, PhD, CPT
Surveys are often used to obtain evaluation data on online courses and instruction because they are easy to design and implement. In the last few articles, I discussed how to write good survey questions in order to provide insights that can help you improve your online courses and instruction. This month, I’ll discuss some special considerations to take when using email to collect survey data.

Teaching Online With Errol: 3rd Annual On the Road: Getting the Most Out of Your Laptop or PC for Very Productive Teaching, Part 1
By Errol Craig Sull
My first “On the Road” piece was written in 2006, and its purpose was to help distance-learning instructors who took their laptops on vacation or to conferences get the most out of their computers. That column proved to be one of my most popular; and when I wrote a follow-up article to it last year, the same response resulted.

Finding Your Place in an ‘Open World’
By Rob Kelly
During his keynote address at the 24th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning, distance education expert Curt Bonk noted how the convergence of the online learning infrastructure, free content, and a culture of increasing open access is creating an “open world” in which “we all learn.”