Discussion is an essential learning activity whether you are teaching in a traditional classroom with an online component or teaching a fully online course. There are many ways to engage students on topics that will help them participate actively in class discussion. Over the years, the idea of discussing a topic in class has evolved from having a face-to-face discussion in between lecture topics to allowing the students to speak about lecture content in a full online discussion forum. Engaging students can make a major difference in online discussions, which generate exchanges that allow students to appreciate the topic discussed and to lead a new level of topic understanding. Below are five tips that can help to add value to your classroom's online discussion.
Indicators of Engagement in the Online Classroom
Faculty wishing to adapt their instructional strategies to maximize engagement may wish to monitor informal, formative indicators of student engagement throughout their courses. As such, the issue becomes how to monitor student engagement in your online course when you cannot see the looks of excitement, interest, or enthusiasm (or when there is a noticeable absence of these engagement indicators).
Online Teaching Fundamentals: PowerPoint for Online Courses, Part 8: Manipulating Clip Art
Clip art use is a bit of a can of worms. When done poorly, adding clip art can make your slides look less professional. But when done well, clip art can improve slide aesthetics. So you should do it well! PowerPoint is a visual communication tool. Slides with a wall of words or with long bullet lists up the snooze factor of your online presentation. So, when designing your slides, you must consider how to show what you are talking about rather than merely telling what you are talking about in slide text. You can expound on what you are showing using narration, which is generally more interesting than telling in text. And if there's a lot to tell, consider adding downloadable documents to read.
Teaching Online With Errol: A Tried and True Mini-Guide to Engaging Online Students
Student engagement is at the heart of any distance learning course. When students are engaged, the class is exciting, learning is more likely to occur, the students want to be a part of the course on an ongoing basis, and the students give you and the school outstanding evaluations. In this column I offer six surefire ways to get and keep students engaged in an online course and, as a bonus, two activities that always result in enthusiastic student engagement throughout the course.
Tips From the Pros: Creating a Network of Learners
When referring to a group of online learners, Caterina Valentino prefers the term "network of learners" to "community of learners." Network of learners is a more apt description because "it's a much more dynamic visualization than 'community of learners,'" says Valentino, an innovator in the delivery of distant education, adjunct professor at the School of Health Services Management at Ryerson University and a Sessional Instructor at Athabasca University's Centre for Nursing and Health Studies. Her vision of a network of learners is an interdependent group in which learners learn from each other and create new knowledge. This does not happen by chance, Valentino says. It's a deliberate process that involves a two-pronged approach based on the Providing Academic and Relational Support (PARS) model created by Stephen Lowe.
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