Flexibility is often a factor for students taking distance courses. Certainly, being able to attend class regardless of where or when it is happening can be a huge benefit for non-traditional students especially. Distance courses and programs at UAF inhabit a spectrum based on percentages of reliance on specified time and place.
There are many reasons to connect with students via an online meeting space. For example, CTL-supported instructors may want to have students check in individually throughout the semester and face-to-face instructors may want to hold group activities outside the physical classroom with real-time interaction. Connecting synchronously with students can happen easily via Google Hangouts, available through the UA Google Apps for Education suite.
A picture gives us a visual anchor that helps us navigate an online conversation, particularly one with many participants. Social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter are obvious examples, but did you know that Blackboard also supports profile pictures? Encouraging their use in your course could help increase student engagement in discussions and allow a learning community to develop more naturally.
Learning objectives are often overlooked because they aren’t well-written. Selecting active words to describe your expectations can help students succeed and help you plan activities and assessments to fulfill those objectives. Learning Objectives. Learning Outcomes. Course Goals. Do I have your attention or have you just skipped over it like most students tend to do?
Engage your students via voice over visuals. You can do it with tools you already have. Sure, you can make a video and incorporate it, but if you’re not quite ready, don’t despair. Put your voice into your course today. Use Keynote (or PowerPoint) and Quicktime to bring your materials to life.
If you use a Community@UAF WordPress site for student contribution in the form of posts, your students can edit the date and time of submission, which may be a concern if you strictly enforce due dates. If you would like to know the exact date and time a student creates a post, there are at least four ways to find out.
You are an ambassador for your discipline. Imagine that you can put aside every external constraint when teaching your class: school and departmental requirements, considerations of technology, classroom seating, student prior knowledge and your own busy schedule. Forget. All. About. That.
FERPA, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, addresses education records and a student’s right to those records and to whom else sees them. As an instructor or faculty at UAF, you have a responsibility to adhere to the requirements set out by the Act. By being aware of a few key requirements, you can adhere to the act without too much effort.
Now, here we are at the beginning of the new semester. How time flies! In expectation of this new semester, this week’s Teaching Tip includes a handful of items to check off your list as you prepare your courses for the first day of class.
Free Online Tools: Digital files come into our lives from many directions: colleagues, students, friends, etc. Everyone has their preferred method of file creation, and the end product may not be a file type we want or are able to read or use. And while some files are pretty easy to convert on our own (.doc to .pdf, for example), there are other types of files for which it’s easier to use an online conversion tool.
Whether you’re designing an all new course or revising and preparing an existing course for a new semester, it’s a lot of work. And work equals time, right? Yes, but that we’re not all necessarily organizing our to-do lists in the most useful way.
Last week we discussed the gold standard of online learning experience design: Your course is complete prior to students ever sitting in their virtual seats. Your intended outcomes are firmly in your sights and you can now devote time during the semester to feedback, assessment, and mentoring. Your solid design and your consistent presence work together to achieve everyone’s educational dreams.
