Best practices
When the world feels too big to shut out of your classroom, do you close the door or do you invite in what’s on the minds of so many? Integrating current events into your course is not only engaging for students, it teaches them to approach challenging conversations as learners and to defend their positions with evidence.
It is well known that rapid responsive communication with students can help eliminate the feeling of isolation in online classes. The question for instructors isn't so much how often you should communicate with students, but how early and in what form? Using one of the tools provided to all University of Alaska faculty, this teaching tip offers the idea of very early, pre-semester email communication with students. The end goal is to positively shape expectations and achievement.
On a flight from Boston to Seattle a couple years ago, I was sitting next to a young man who told me that he was in his final semester in computer engineering at M.I.T. and he was going for his first interview at a big company, which he was pretty excited about.
Last year I spent two days in a cold hotel conference room in Dallas practicing how to build connections between group members. Connecting individuals increases their chances of building community. Building community helps with success.
The physical space of a campus blends student support into the learning environment: on the first day of school, students taking face-to-face courses walk onto campus, stroll past the library, the Writing Center, and their advisor's office on the way to your class. They greet their classmates who, a few weeks into the semester, are the ones they will ask when they’re confused about your instructions.
Nearly everyone alive today has experience as a student in a traditional, brick and mortar classroom within a traditional classroom paradigm. How many of us have experience as fully online students? There are few basic ways that online instructors without such experience can bridge that gap and accommodate and empathize with the needs of students.
The start of a new semester begins soon! In a face-to-face class, you usually connect with students on the first day of class. You quickly confirm students know where and when to meet. Most faculty give an overview of the course and introduce students to the syllabus. Faculty introduce themselves to the students and often have the students introduce themselves to the class.
Setting up a discussion board designed to allow your students to communicate with one another may lower the number of emails you receive. It will empower students to ask each other quick questions, and it might get them talking. Make sure students know it is a resource that becomes more useful with their active use. As students continue to interact they build relationships which benefit them both during the course and after. Read this teaching tip for ideas on how to implement this type of discussion board.
One of the most common questions we receive from faculty in UAF CTL iTeach workshops is
"what does an online course look like"? We all have years - and in some cases decades - of practice forming expectations of face-to-face learning experiences, but for those who are new to teaching online, it is often difficult to imagine how it all works. Learning experiences are complicated. Even if you're a veteran online instructor, it can be helpful to take a look at what others are doing in their online courses. No matter where you're at, touring a few courses can be a very important step toward building your fluency with the medium of online instruction.
Finals are over and hopefully mostly graded. The real end is in sight and our eyes are all firmly fixed ahead toward the quiet green of summer. However, right now there’s a great opportunity to do as much to improve your teaching next semester as anything.
It’s always a good idea to use a script or an outline when shooting a video for your online course. Your speech is more deliberate, and the script ensures that you are on message and do not repeat yourself or wander off topic. But there is another excellent reason to use a script when creating a video. The script can accompany your video as a transcript, and thanks to YouTube’s auto-timing caption feature, it can also serve as closed captions.
In preparation for student access, instructors may customize their course evaluation by selecting existing or creating up to eight new questions to be added to the survey. (This process is called “question personalization.') Instructors choose questions from predefined questions or craft their own. These questions appear at the end of the survey.