Faculty Focus: Online Teaching Tips: Sweat the Small Stuff!

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/online-teaching-tips-it-pays-to-sweat-the-small-stuff/?c=FF&t=F100414

By Errol Craig Sull

When we teach online courses there are many fundamental issues that concern us: knowledge of our subjects, teaching strategies, engagement of students, school policies, deadlines, grading and returning of assignments, posting announcements, and responding to students—the list goes on.


There also are some “not-so-major items” that are important but don’t seem quite as crucial. However, when one of these is overlooked, it can become the ugliest wart on your class, resulting in negative student attitudes and a diminishing of your stature as instructor.


The following list contains a few of these “small things” that often are overlooked in online courses.

Look over your course before it begins. Because a course is usually preset by the school, many online faculty assume that everything is ready to go. But often this is not the case. Be sure to check for broken links, duplication of or missing assignments, and typos. Confirm that all course material is visible to the students and that grading/points have been assigned to each project, homework, and test; and that final exam dates (if applicable) and all related information are posted.



Check your spelling and grammar. Students will not appreciate emails, announcements, and other postings with spelling errors, typos, or punctuation/grammar errors. Sure, it takes a bit more time to check for these—but it’s your reputation and the school’s reputation at stake. While no one is perfect, students expect their instructors to be—and all it takes is one typo from you for a student to feel that you are not prepared to teach.


Be sure that page numbers in assignments match the text(s). Sometimes the assigned pages do not match the pages in the text(s) students have. This happens most often when an instructor is teaching a course again and again and forgets to check for a new edition of the text(s) being used, page numbers are entered incorrectly, or the text(s) you assigned does/do not match the one(s) ordered by the bookstore. Be sure all assigned readings are in sync with the text(s) used—your course will proceed much more smoothly if they are.


Make a checklist of all school policies applicable to your course. It is so easy to overlook or forget one or two school policies or procedures, especially if you are new to the school. Make a checklist so you won’t overlook any. If you are unsure of a policy, ask a supervisor.

Always be positive in your feedback and postings. You will be teaching many students, so you will be typing many thousands of words during one course; this can make it easy to overlook your tone or word choice now and then. Don’t let it happen. A negative tone, use of all caps, and no positives in assignment feedback, emails, or other postings can be devastating to a student. So check all before you send, and always end each missive with an upbeat, optimistic tone.


Be substantive in your announcements, feedback, postings, etc. Students can’t see you (except in rare webinars) or shake hands with you; all they have are your words, so it is crucial that they are, for the most part, many. The “Great paragraph, Tom!” or “Good point, Cathy!” postings are fine, but they should never be representative of your writings to students. Be substantive (and do so often, not occasionally) in these so they know that you are invested in the class, care about the class, and are interested in the class.

Keep track of the errors and oversights you discover for future courses. We all make mistakes in each course we teach. But as long as we use these errors as lessons to improve ourselves, they are not for naught. Make a list of these errors and keep them handy so that when you next teach a course the same problems will not occur. Your class will run more smoothly, the students will have a more positive learning experience, and you’ll feel more relaxed.


Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 14 years and has a national reputation in the subject, both writing and conducting workshops on it.

Excerpted from Teaching Online With Errol: In Teaching Online Never Overlook the Small Things, March 2009, Online Classroom.
Permalink: http://www.facultyfocus.com?p=12496

Faculty Focus: Online Teaching Tips: Sweat the Small Stuff!

Welcome New Core Committee Members/New POD President/New President-Elect, Dr. Phyllis Worthy Dawkins of DU!

Dear Colleagues,

As announced in our winter newsletter, the new POD President is Peter Felten, Elon University, who will serve through the Spring Core Committee meeting in March 2011. Our new President Elect is Phyllis Worthy Dawkins, Dillard University. Our new Past President is Mike Theall, Youngstown State University.


Our five new Core Committee members, serving from 2010 to 2013, are:
Derek Bruff, Vanderbilt University; Dakin Burdick, Endicott College; Kevin M. Johnston, Michigan State University; Angela Linse, Pennsylvania State University; and Deandra Little, University of Virginia.
Sincere thanks for your willingness to serve the POD Network! Please see more details about POD's Core Committee members here: www.podnetwork.org/about/core.htm


Any POD member who wishes to become more involved in POD is encouraged to consider joining a committee. Please see full list, current as of April 2010, of committees and contacts here: www.podnetwork.org/about/committees.htm


Each fall, at the annual conference, the Core Committee holds a presidential election where up to three eligible candidates are considered. To be eligible for election, one must have served a term on Core but not have been off Core more than five years. At our fall 2009 conference, Phyllis Worthy Dawkins was elected as our next President Elect. Phyllis will become President at the conclusion of the spring Core Committee meeting in March 2011.


The Core Committee functions as the board of directors for POD. Core Committee members are elected each year by the POD membership. The call for self-nominations is issued to the entire membership each fall. Anyone who has been a member of POD for three or more years is eligible. Core Committee members serve for three years.


For more information, please see the Governance Manual: www.podnetwork.org/pdf/PODGovernanceManual.pdf


very best wishes,

--Hoag
Hoag Holmgren, Executive Director
The Professional & Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education PO Box 3318 Nederland, CO 80466
phone: 303-258-9521
fax: 303-258-7377
www.podnetwork.org

Welcome New Core Committee Members/New POD President/New President-Elect, Dr. Phyllis Worthy Dawkins of DU!

NISOD Branding & Teaching: 32nd Annual International Conference on Teaching & Leadership Excellence

http://www.nisod.org/conference/

About NISOD

Since 1978, the National Institute for Staff & Organizational Development (NISOD) has been dedicated to the professional development of faculty, administrators, and staff; and to the continued improvement of teaching and learning, with the ultimate goal of student success.

More than 700 community colleges around the world are NISOD-members, including almost every large community college district, the majority of urban and technical colleges in the United States and Canada, and more than 200 small, rural colleges around the world.


NISOD is the outreach vehicle and service arm to the Community College Leadership Program (CCLP). The CCLP, at The University of Texas at Austin, is a doctoral-level program training community college presidents, vice presidents, and deans for 60 years. More than 15 percent of the nation's presidents, vice presidents, and deans, as well as a healthy proportion of other college administrators, are UT-CCLP graduates.

NISOD Branding & Teaching: 32nd Annual International Conference on Teaching & Leadership Excellence

Inside Higher Ed: Why They Take So Long To Earn Bachelor's Degrees

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/14/degree

April 14, 2010

Students who take too long to earn bachelor's degrees are the frustration of parents, college leaders and policy makers alike -- who see the six-year bachelor's degree (or longer) as being more expensive for all involved, and particularly wasteful when many campuses are bulging due to increased enrollments.


A new study (abstract available here) from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that the growth in the length of time needed to earn bachelor's degrees is indeed real and cause for concern. But the study finds that the shift, over recent decades, to longer time-to-degree rates is not uniform across colleges, but is concentrated among students who enroll at less competitive four-year public institutions and at community colleges. Further, the analysis finds likely links between longer time-to-degree rates and resources, both of institutions and of students.

The implication of the study, the authors write, is that those who want students to graduate more promptly need to talk about money. "Our finding of increased stratification in resources among colleges and universities -- both between publics and privates and within the public sector -- suggests that the attenuation of resources at less-selective public universities in particular limits the rate of degree attainment," write the authors, John Bound of the University of Michigan, Michael F. Lovenheim of Cornell University, and Sarah Turner of the University of Virginia.


The authors start by verifying the widely-held view that too many students take longer than people expect (four years) to earn a bachelor's degree. Using databases that track students over time, they write that of those who graduated from high school in 1972, 58 percent of those who eventually earned a bachelor's degree did so within four years of finishing high school, which is what many consider to be "on time." For the class that graduated in 1992, only 44 percent did so. Then the authors examine time-to-degree rates by sector and find relatively little change among private colleges or among top public universities. But among public institutions not considered "top 50," the authors find a contrast. Among those at the top-ranked publics, 55.5 percent finish in four years. At all other state and local institutions, the share is only 34.7 percent.

This raises the question of why, and the authors explore various options. One theory -- frequently advanced by those who question the goals of having more Americans earn college degrees -- is that those coming into higher education outside of competitive colleges are less well prepared, and so are unable to move ahead in college at expected rates. But the authors find no evidence for this (based either on the courses students have taken before college or on their performance in college), and reject this theory.

They do find evidence of links between various measures of resources and time to degree. For example, while acknowledging that any one resource measure may be imperfect, they examine student-to-faculty ratios. During the period studied, student-faculty ratios increased overall in public institutions from 25.5 to 29.8 to 1. But at the top 50 institutions (and at private colleges), the ratios decreased, meaning that the increase everywhere else was larger. Other measures as well, the authors write, suggest that the institutions that have preserved time-to-degree rates are those with relatively more resources.


As another illustration of the resource impact, the authors focus on states that experienced enrollment increases. Given that state appropriations frequently (and consistently in recent years) have lagged such increases, they speculate that enrollment increases decrease resources per student, and thus could increase time to degree. And that's what they find: For every 1 percent increase in a state's population of 18-year-olds, time to degree increases by 0.71 years. For those outside the top 50 institutions, the increase is greater -- 1.11 years -- again suggesting that states find ways to provide more to the more competitive institutions.


Resource gaps also extend to the students at the different types of institutions -- with those outside of the elite institutions more likely to work longer hours in jobs, limiting the time they can devote to their educations.
"The sum total of our evidence points strongly toward the central role of declines in both personal and institutional resources available to students in explaining the increases in time to baccalaureate degree in the U.S.," the authors conclude. "That these increases are concentrated among students attending public colleges and universities outside the most selective few suggests a need for more attention to how these institutions adjust to budget constraints and student demand and how students at these colleges finance higher education."
— Scott Jaschik

Inside Higher Ed: Why They Take So Long To Earn Bachelor's Degrees

Campus Technology Free Webinar: "From Lecture Capture to Content Capture: Moving Beyond the Traditional Approach"

Join Campus Technology and TechSmith Corporation for this FREE 1-hour webinar.

Date: Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Time: 11 AM (PST), 2 PM (EST)

http://campustechnology.com/webcasts/2010/03/techsmith_from-lecture-capture-to-content-capture-moving-beyond-the-traditional-approach.aspx?pc=e074em03&utm_source=webmktg&utm_medium=em&utm_campaign=e074em03

Get creative and go beyond the traditional use of lecture capture. Join us for this FREE webinar to learn how Eric Coffman from West Virginia University and David Wicks from Seattle Pacific University are using lecture capture technology, Camtasia Relay to:

• Turn classroom discussions into on-demand teaching aids
• Move from traditional classroom recordings to the creation of `hybrid courses'-where some lectures are pre-recorded and shared
• Empower students, colleagues and customers by providing the information they need, when they need it

Anyone and everyone at your organization can record live lectures, presentations and meetings from a Mac or PC and publish it for all to view on the web or mobile device. Also, there are no technical decisions for the presenters, all the heavy lifting is done at a central server. Discover new, innovative ways you can incorporate lecture capture into your curriculum.

Campus Technology and TechSmith Corporation

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Campus Technology Free Webinar: "From Lecture Capture to Content Capture: Moving Beyond the Traditional Approach"