Post by: David Rice, Associate Professor of English and participant in the Learning Community on Online Teaching & Learning When the topic of online teaching comes up among faculty, inevitably some colleagues question the wisdom of delivering their content online. Though many teachers find the idea of online teaching intriguing or even inspiring, the question “why teach online” is a… Read more →
Post by: Jennifer Campbell, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Music Education and participant in the Learning Community on Online Teaching & Learning “But how do I get a good grade?” Every instructor has been asked this question by a student, and to boil it down to a single word answer, hopefully we can agree upon, “expectations.” Students are asked to… Read more →
Post By: Daniel Nester, Associate Professor of English and participant in the Learning Community on Online Teaching & Learning Getting students to participate in class discussion remains an evergreen faculty concern. In the classroom, instructors might draw from any number of techniques, from working on the board or breaking up in groups to the classic open-ended Socratic question. Online learning presents… Read more →
A new learning community that has formed to explore the opportunities and issues surrounding the broad topic of Online Teaching and Learning met for the first time. I’ll call the group LC:OTL, and we’ll call the meetings gatherings. …I sense much less “pressure” compared to “a traditional committee”…I think that is a huge plus. This open group of practitioners will gather on a… Read more →
How can academic Twitter be useful? Networking: Twitter can be useful for academics to identify and connect with global peers. Connecting with authors of texts or other people working in the same field of interest can be very useful and enlightening. Webinar and conference presenters often share their Twitter handles as well as their email addresses, so it can… Read more →
One of the most useful tools in Blackboard for faculty who accept their work digitally is the In-Line Grading functionality. It allows you to look at, annotate, comment and grade student file submissions without leaving the browser. Over this upcoming winter, some changes will be happening with the tool. This article will keep you informed about the changes. What’s changing?… Read more →
In the spring of 2017, faculty and undergraduate students at The College of Saint Rose were invited to participate in EDUCAUSE technology surveys, giving our institution the opportunity to benchmark its technology attitudes, experiences, and preferences with the global respondent pools and to directly compare between faculty and students. Although there is considerable overlap in student and faculty opinions about technology,… Read more →
One area in which we receive a lot of questions by instructors-to-be of fully online and hybrid courses is about communication in online courses. How much should you communicate? What will students expect? How often should I log into my course? These are great questions! When we’re thinking about instructional design, we call this “social presence”. It’s part of a… Read more →
We know that there are benefits to harnessing certain elements of games in learning, and we know that there are more and less ideal ways to implement games in the classroom. We also know that there are two common terms for this implementation: gamifying and gameful learning. So, what’s the difference between the two? Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, and Nacke attempted… Read more →
Gamifying learning and its young, hip child gameful learning are interesting ideas, often executed poorly. We know that the point of including game-like elements (or games themselves) in the classroom is a way to increase motivation and utilize implicit learning skills. What are the basic do’s and don’ts of incorporating these ideas? Do: Use games the way you would assigned… Read more →
