Resources
There’s no doubt that a great classroom lecturer can be an inspiration to students. But almost all lecturers worry that their students are not learning how to discover, how to make connections on their own. If you have never taught an online course you’ll be surprised to learn that teaching online, as described by the authors, has the potential for providing students with a truly comprehensive learning experience. An online course can offer students the chance to learn through exploration, to pursue related areas of interest, to participate in a community of learners, and to take advantage of opportunities to excel. This book, ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS: Prepare, Design, and Teach Your Online Course offers an easy-to-follow guide that is based on a model developed from experience with hundreds of online courses. The authors are members of The Concord Consortium, a nonprofit educational technology lab dedicated to improving teaching practices through the appropriate integrated use of technology in the classroom. Based on their experience, the authors offer the Concord Consortium e-Learning Model — which provides a working overview of online teaching — and seventeen essential elements that take you step-by-step through everything you’ll need to know for successful online teaching. The essential elements describe the necessary steps to put the Concord model into practice with these results: * You will use courseware to display your course assignments and reference materials as text, with graphics, colors, and multimedia to enhance the presentation. *Your course will have clearly written assignments that engage your students in active learning with each other. *You, as the instructor, will play an integral roll as a facilitator of that learning. *Your will use the Internet both as a resource and as a means for connecting yourself and your students based on your mutual interest in the content — regardless of your individual schedules, geographic location, or physical ability to come to class. *You and your students will communicate and collaborate on a regular basis in a discussion area that allows for student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction. *Students will assess their own growth and learning through group discussion and reflection, peer review, instructor feedback, and self-evaluation. The essential elements are presented in three sections — prepare, design, and teach — that will take you from the starting gate to the finishing line, offering complete assistance for the new online teacher and new techniques and tips for those who have taught online before. With tips addressing everything from technology to student assessments, from online community building to collaborative teaming, and from scheduling and pacing to facilitating online discussions, the authors have the virtual classroom covered. (From the Publisher)
Journal Issue. (This issue, and all "Spotlight on Teaching" issues prior to 1999, are not available on the AAR website.)
It Works For Me, Online is designed primarily to aid instructors in two major types of classes: fully online and web-enhanced/hybrid courses. Those who teach fully online classes will find tips on such things as tricks you can use with synchronous chats, how to use blogging in your classroom to replace traditional chat-rooms (talk about your superannuation), and even ways of adapting Blackboard to meet administrative needs. Those who prefer web enhancements to the traditional classroom will find advice to navigate between the virtual and real world. And, truthfully, we are hopeful that even dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying Luddites will skim through these pages and realize it is possible for old dogs to learn new tricks (we and many of our contributors are either retiring or nearing retirement, yet found the brave new world of technology as exciting as we did our Erector Sets as kids or learning to beat our own kids at Pac-Man). Use It Works For Me, Online both as a handy desk companion filled with practical strategies and as a springboard for generating your own strategies for making your classes as effective as possible. Like the first two books in this series, It Works For Me and It Works For Me, Too, this handbook runs the gamut from short to long pieces, from very course-specific suggestions to general pieces, from some theoretical applications to down-to-earth tactics. But the following tips share one important common characteristic–they all work. (From the Publisher)
Teaching for Understanding with Technology shows how teachers can maximize the potential of new technologies to advance student learning and achievement. It uses the popular Teaching for Understanding framework that guides learners to think, analyze, solve problems, and make meaning of what they've learned. (From the Publisher)
We live in a media culture, surrounded by ever-evolving digital technologies. Engaging Technology in Theological Education is a breakthrough book that invites religious educators to both engage and adapt their pedagogy to incorporate new media and technology. Drawing from her expertise as a seminary professor and consultant to religious institutions on the use of technology in teaching, Mary E. Hess invites professors, pastors, seminarians, and anyone interested in religious education to critically reflect on ways of engaging technology to enhance learning and to serve as critical interpreters within communities of faith. (From the Publisher)
This self-assessment guide will help all teaching professionals - whether in higher education, schools or management training - to assess, critique, reflect on and improve practice. The book is based on extensive research carried out at the Institute for Learning at the University of Hull. Fully practical, it looks at the generic skills of teaching, and guides readers to consider their own work both in the light of best practice and of their own strengths and weaknesses. In so doing it will help to assess and build teaching that is best for the individual and their situation. Developed around the basic functions of teaching, rather than the methods used to actually deliver learning, the Guide shows readers how to identify key elements of their teaching, and its context, and uses a matrix approach to suggest routes to bring about change. "Trouble-Shooting Your Teaching" will help to identify possible problem factors (intake, course, materials, teaching, support, assessment); to recognize agents of change (learners, self, colleagues, support staff, management, stake-holders); and to initiate improvement. It will be a valuable self-help tool for any teacher who is concerned about diagnosing, understanding and developing his or her own practice. (From the Publisher)
Gathering concepts and techniques borrowed from outstanding college professors, The Joy of Teaching provides helpful guidance for new instructors developing and teaching their first college courses. Award-winning professor Peter Filene proposes that teaching should not be like a baseball game in which the instructor pitches ideas to students to see whether they hit or strike out. Ideally, he says, teaching should resemble a game of Frisbee in which the teacher invites students to catch ideas and pass them on. Rather than prescribe any single model for success, Filene lays out the advantages and disadvantages of various pedagogical strategies, inviting new teachers to make choices based on their own personalities, values, and goals. Filene tackles everything from syllabus writing and lecture planning to class discussions, grading, and teacher-student interactions outside the classroom. The book's down-to-earth, accessible style makes it appropriate for teachers in all fields. Instructors in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences will all welcome its invaluable tips for successful teaching and learning. (From the Publisher)
Suskie (Towson U.) believes in developing an assessment culture in schools and universities. She describes assessment as a four-step continuous cycle of establishing learning goals, providing learning opportunities, assessing student learning, and making good use of results. She provides rubrics for evaluating a variety of learning opportunities and media, and supplies model examinations, surveys, checklists, and reports for publication. (From the Publisher)