When they work, online discussions provide students with transformative experiences. They require students to think critically about a topic, delve deeply and explore … [Read more...]
How to Improve Performance
In this TED Talk, Eduardo Briceño talks about how people improve their performance of a task--and the answer is not to perform that task more often. The answer lies in … [Read more...]
Quick Tip: Print Multiple Pages Per Sheet
Many students and faculty want to know how to save paper when printing materials for offline viewing. For PDFs viewed with Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat, this can be … [Read more...]
Writing Smart Learning Outcomes
All of our courses start with learning outcomes—short statements identifying what the student will be able to do after the course or the lesson. Learning outcomes are … [Read more...]
Quick Tip: The Dog Ate My Quiz
All the studying in the world won't help a student if they have poor Internet connectivity when taking a quiz. Unfortunately, sometimes it does happen that a student … [Read more...]
Quick Tip: Composing in Word
It is often a good idea to compose discussion posts in Word and then copy/paste them to the online discussion. Not every post, of course, but, let’s say you’ve spent a … [Read more...]
Determining Credit Hours in an Online Course
In a face-to-face course, credit hours are generally based on the hours per week the students spend in the classroom or lab, or "contact hours" with the students. A … [Read more...]
Backwards Design
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, the authors of Understanding by Design describe their instructional design technique as backwards, and it has come to be one of the most … [Read more...]
Ensuring Academic Honesty in the Online Classroom
What is cheating? I'm sure we'd all agree that copying answers from someone else's exam is cheating. But what about discussing the options and then answering? Is that … [Read more...]
The Course Wrap Up
You’ve spent weeks teaching a course, and the final week is here. You figure your students are busy preparing for their final project or exam, and the last thing they … [Read more...]