The conversations about online proctoring of… excuse me… online surveillance during… exams has caused me to take a deeper look at the technology tools we use to ensure academic honesty. By the way, The Manifesto for Online Learning (Bayne, 2020) has a wonderful and brief discussion of this issue. Specifically, I started thinking about plagiarism Read More
Category: Online Teaching
Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology
For all of the rhetoric around being data driven for the last few decades, educators are generally woeful users of data when it comes to making classroom decisions. In my opinion, this is due to the fact that data (quantitative date that is) can only be meaningfully be applied to large data set. We might Read More
Small Teaching Online
The stream of “how to teach online” books and materials to support those faculty who are teaching online. I enjoy these. They are increasingly aligned with what we know about learning (and we know much more than my teachers did… we know more than any teachers did even 10 years ago). One of the great Read More
Mixing Up the Interactions
My colleagues at Massachusetts Community Colleges that use Moodle as their LMS have begun collaborating to offer workshops to faculty and staff at all of our campuses. We did not record the first virtual workshop, but I prepared this abbreviated version of the presentation I made on July 6, 2020.
Wikis: A Different Form of Interaction in Online Courses
In education, interaction matters. If you want your students to remember what they are supposed to learn and if you want them to be able to use what you teach them in other situation, then they must think about it with you and with other students. This idea has been featured in this blog previously. Read More
Thinking about Online Discussions
Discussions in online classrooms are a different experience for both teachers and students compared to discussions in traditional classrooms. Traditional discussions are synchronous, so they can be guided in real-time. I often compare it to driving a car. Instructors can change the direction, speed up, slow down, or even stop in response to the input Read More
On High Quality Online Classrooms
What exactly is a high-quality online course is a question that has held the attention of researchers, practitioners, and entrepreneurs for decades. Many schools have adopted their own set of guidelines, perhaps even templates other methods of making sure instructors have in place what the school leaders believe to be effective practices. Some schools have Read More
Discussions for Deeper Processing
“What is it weakest part of your online or blended course?” is a question I have posed to faculty who teach online. A synopsis of one of the most commonly encountered answers is: I’m afraid my students feel the same about my discussions as I do. They post and respond, and I tell them “say Read More
Learning Online: The Student Experience
George Veletsianos’s book Learning Online: The Student Experience is both very timely and ill-timed in the spring of 2020. We all now of the widespread and nearly-instantaneous move to remote teaching. Online teaching and learning is on our minds and urgent request for “how do I…?” are filling our inboxes. It seems a book (especially Read More
How Will This Turn Out?
I write this in the midst of the pandemic. What the coming weeks and moths hold are unknown. All I can hope is that we are nearing the end of this rather than the beginning. For several days, I have been working with faculty to figure out how to teach online. We are preparing for Read More