best practices

Best Practices in Online Teaching Online Teaching: Best Practices (8:52)
This video summarizes 10 Best Practices for online teaching. What distinguishes the presenter’s approach is that she provides multiple ways to employ each individual practice.

How to Design Your Online Course (5:43)
Detailed discussion of how to apply 3 key principles of backward design to online teaching: Identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence (assessment), plan learning experiences and facilitation.

Online Classes: Tips for Success (10:48)
Engaging summary of what students like about online courses, why distraction challenges student learning online, factors that detract or contribute to online learning, and some ways to increase odds of success. Recommended for prospective online students as well as teachers.

Evaluating Discussion Boards (6:39)
Three professors describe the rubrics they use for grading contributions to discussion boards.

Using Blogs in Online Classes as a Learning Tool (10:52)
Why and how to use collaborative and “individual writing network” blogs as an alternative to discussion boards. The presenter suggests guidelines for integrating blogs into online teaching and enumerates the benefits she’s observed.

Creating an Interactive and Personal Course (8:22)
What student posts in discussion boards tell teachers and how to use this knowledge in “announcement links” to interact with the class. Other purposes of general comments from the instructor through these links are outlined as well. Presenter discusses the advantage of blogs over discussion boards for personal interaction with individual students.

VoiceThread in Online Courses (15:39)
A thorough introduction to using VoiceThread: what it is, benefits of using it, challenges it presents, and how to overcome them.

How Students Cheat (8:13)
Situates student behavior along a “continuum of cheating” and explains forms of cheating less commonly classified as such in order that professors can take steps to minimize these behaviors.

Using Weekly Video in Your Online Course (7:06)
A professor’s musings on why weekly video posts to students enhance online teaching and learning.

Group Discussions in Online Classes (6:23)
Strategies for stimulating online small-group discussion of readings and presentations.