Resources

How can faculty create a strong e presence for their online classes? This volume highlights the need for creating a presence in the online environment. The authors explore the emotional, psychological, and social aspects from both the instructor and student perspective. It provides an instructional design framework and shows how a strong presence contributes to effective teaching and learning. Filled with illustrative examples and based on research and experience, the book contains methods, case scenarios, and activities for creating, maintaining, and evaluating presence throughout the cycle of an online course. (From the Publisher)

In MindMeld, Jon D. Aleckson and Penny Ralston-Berg draw on a great many years of experience in educational technology to describe how the benefits of learning from an accomplished expert (a professor, for instance) can be translated into an online format. Industry professionals know that the online format presents an opportunity for highly interactive pedagogy, a pedagogy by which students synchronize learning with doing, replicating the information-processing habits that come from real-life work in the field. According to Aleckson, the key to creating an ideal eLearning product is to meet the challenge of micro-collaboration. In order to develop sophisticated online learning activities, we must find a way to convey the tacit knowledge of someone with real-life experience using the tools of software design. This requires us to micro-collaborate: individuals with very different backgrounds and very different skills sets have to work in harmony to achieve a common goal. It may sound simple, but anyone who has labored on an eLearning project knows otherwise. In MindMeld, Aleckson and Ralston-Berg take us step by step through the leadership, management, and communication strategies that make effective micro-collaboration possible, using stories of actual projects to illustrate his points. In addition, they provide a collection of documentation tools to assist in keeping an eLearning project on spec, on time, and on budget. This concise, readable volume contextualizes each aspect of eLearning development and highlights the ways in which different team members interact. It will prove invaluable to readers in both the business and academic worlds. As a bonus to readers, the authors have created an exciting set of "tools" for helping conceptualize and implement the process. (From the Publisher)

Successfully launching an academic career in the challenging environment of higher education today is apt to require more explicit preparation than the informal socialization typically afforded in graduate school. As a faculty novice soon discovers, job success requires balancing multiple demands on one's time and energy. New Faculty offers a useful compendium of 'survival' advice for the faculty newcomer, ranging from practical tips on classroom teaching and student performance evaluation to detailed advice on grant-writing, student advising, professional service, and publishing. Beginning faculty members - and possibly their more experienced colleagues as well - will find this lively guidebook both informative and thought-provoking. (From the Publisher)

Two seismic forces beyond our control – the advent of Web 2.0 and the inexorable influx of tech-savvy Millennials on campus – are shaping what Roger McHaney calls “The New Digital Shoreline” of higher education. Failure to chart its contours, and adapt, poses a major threat to higher education as we know it. These forces demand that we as educators reconsider the learning theories, pedagogies, and practices on which we have depended, and modify our interactions with students and peers—all without sacrificing good teaching, or lowering standards, to improve student outcomes. Achieving these goals requires understanding how the indigenous population of this new shoreline is different. These students aren’t necessarily smarter or technologically superior, but they do have different expectations. Their approaches to learning are shaped by social networking and other forms of convenient, computer-enabled and mobile communication devices; by instant access to an over-abundance of information; by technologies that have conferred the ability to personalize and customize their world to a degree never seen before; and by time-shifting and time-slicing. As well as understanding students’ assumptions and expectations, we have no option but to familiarize ourselves with the characteristics and applications of Web 2.0—essentially a new mind set about how to use Internet technologies around the concepts of social computing, social media, content sharing, filtering, and user experience. Roger McHaney not only deftly analyzes how Web 2.0 is shaping the attitudes and motivations of today’s students, but guides us through the topography of existing and emerging digital media, environments, applications, platforms and devices – not least the impact of e-readers and tablets on the future of the textbook – and the potential they have for disrupting teacher-student relationships; and, if appropriately used, for engaging students in their learning. This book argues for nothing less than a reinvention of higher education to meet these new realities. Just adding technology to our teaching practices will not suffice. McHaney calls for a complete rethinking of our practice of teaching to meet the needs of this emerging world and envisioning ourselves as connected, co-learners with our students. (From the Publisher)

There are many, many teacher training books that claim to offer practical advice; some of them are even useful. There are also humorous books aimed at teachers claiming to offer a zany, sideways look at our madcap world; some of them even contain a joke. This book, although light in tone, has a serious intent: to reassure trainee and beginning teachers that are parachuted into difficult schools without anything like the right level of preparation. Tom Bennett walks you through the training and initial teaching practice, offering practical advice and wisdom from the more experienced vantage point of hindsight. This double-narrator style allows you to identify with the situation, learn from the experience and then critically reflect on your own teaching journey. But most importantly, this is a teacher training guide disguised as something actually readable. (From the Publisher)

Becoming a New Instructor guides new instructors through the planning, preparation, and execution of their first class, whether it is in person or online. Like any good mentor, this book provides clear, simple instructions and makes best-practice recommendations. Becoming a New Instructor provides a step-by-step guide to writing a syllabus, a simple explanation for how to calculate grades, and many additional suggestions from an experienced teacher about how to run a class. Chronologically arranged from conceptualizing the class through putting together the syllabus, planning in-class time, running the class, and assigning grades, this book will answer any new instructors’ questions. Adjuncts and graduate students charged with teaching a college course will find this succinct guide invaluable. Special Features Include: • An entire chapter on teaching online, plus "Concerns Specific to Online Instructors" throughout that connect chapter content to online teaching and CMS platforms • Examples of best practice, checklists, sample assignments, syllabi, and rubrics that guide readers in creating materials for their own courses (From the Publisher)

In this valuable resource, experts share deep knowledge including practical “how-to” and preventive trouble-shooting tips. Instructors will learn about course design and development, instructional methods for online teaching, and student engagement and community building techniques. The book contains successful teaching strategies, guidance for facilitating interactions and responding to diversity, and assessments, as well as future directions for online learning. With many field-tested examples and practice assignments, and with voices from students, teachers, and experts, this book arms instructors and administrators with the tools they need to teach effective and empowering online courses. This one-stop resource addresses all of the core elements of online teaching in terms that are universally applicable to any content area and at any instructional level. (From the Publisher)

After many years in the classroom, in conjunction with many years of mentoring other teachers, David Irving has set out to create a succinct and highly accessible volume of techniques and strategies for beginning educators. Most educators come to teaching with vast subject matter expertise, but limited classroom experience. This text is for them. It offers pragmatic guidelines and suggestions in easily managed bits. For those interested in going deeper, there are suggestions for further study. Drawing upon his own experience in film and the transition he made to the classroom, David is able to highlight some techniques that serve both professions and translate them here for teachers. The issues that he faced in moving to the classroom are the issues that all new educators encounter. Further, drawing upon his experiences as a department chair, David sees the important role that a chair has in fostering the growth of the new educators. He suggests that chairs can do much to assist. However, the most universally helpful part of the text is in the clear, unambiguous techniques and strategies for the classroom and career success. He writes: Instructors need training to teach college courses. Equally important, they should be informed about the workings of the academic department in which they will teach. This volume is ideal for new instructors and for professional development for departments. (From the Publisher)

An ideal textbook for masters, doctoral, or educational specialist certificate programs, Foundations of Educational Technology offers a fresh, project-centered approach to the subject, helping students build an extensive electronic portfolio as they navigate the text. The book addresses fundamental characteristics of educational technology that span various users, contexts and settings; includes a full range of engaging exercises for students that will contribute to their professional growth; and offers the following 4-step pedagogical features inspired by M.D. Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction: • TELL: Primary presentations and pointers to major sources of information and resources • ASK: Activities that encourage students to critique applications and share their individual interpretations • SHOW: Activities that demonstrate the application of key concepts and complex skills with appropriate opportunities for learner responses • DO: Activities in which learners apply key concepts and complex skills while working on practice assignments and/or projects to be created for their electronic portfolios The first textbook to launch Routledge’s new Integrative Approaches to Educational Technology series, this indispensable volume covers the core objectives addressed in foundations of educational technology courses. (From the Publisher)

The hiring, training, and evaluation of good online instructors is a high priority for online institutions. This book shows what it takes to develop a new instructor in order to promote excellent online teaching and describes the qualities of a good online instructor and reveals how to evaluate good teaching online. In addition, It includes illustrative models of faculty training for online teaching based on adult learning principles and best practices in faculty training and identifies how   technology can be used to facilitate and enhance the training process. (From the Publisher)