Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Faculty Focus Special Reports...June 2010...Download Free PDF Reports!
Distance education is only now overcoming its status as an academic upstart, or the poor relation of classroom education. Like any new movement, it has its growing pains. But in experiencing these challenges, it’s important for distance educators to know that they’re not alone. Many of these difficulties are actually common experiences, and your colleagues across the country have been working on ways to meet them and turn them to their advantage.
Strategies for Teaching Large Classes
Sometimes you look out from the podium at the sea of faces looking back at you, and you wonder: Is this a class or a rock concert? Most educators would agree that their ideal teaching environment would be (to carry the musical theme a little further) the equivalent of an intimate, acoustic, coffee-shop performance.
Student Collaboration in the Online Classroom
One of the best teaching tools in a traditional classroom is the team project. When students work together, they learn a great deal – not just about what they’re studying, but about how to work with others toward common goals, with shared responsibilities, for shared reward. Traditional classrooms have an innate advantage in bringing students together … the students are sitting there right in front of them. A collaborative project can begin by simply seating the team at the same table.
12 Tips for Improving Your Faculty Development Plan
Countless workshops, seminars, retreats, and other faculty development courses are offered under the assumption that they can positively affect how faculty teach, which in turn will help students learn.
Put to the Test: Making Sense of Educational Assessment
Educational assessment is one of the most talked about topics in higher education today. Despite the admirable goal of improving student learning, the trend toward greater accountability through increased academic testing carries with it a diverse range of educational assessment tools, methodologies, perspectives, and stakeholders.
10 Effective Classroom Management Techniques Every Faculty Member Should Know
Effective classroom management is much more than simply administering corrective measures when a student misbehaves; it’s about developing proactive ways to prevent problems from occurring in the first place while creating a positive learning environment.
Online Course Design: 13 Strategies for Teaching in a Web-based Distance Learning Environment
Good online course design begins with a clear understanding of specific learning outcomes and ways to engage students, while creating activities that allow students to take some control of their learning. It also requires a little extra effort upfront to minimize two of the most common frustrations of online learning.
Strategies for Increasing Online Student Retention and Satisfaction
As an increasing number of colleges and universities identify online education as a critical component to their long-term strategy, the issue of retention can no longer be ignored. It is mandatory for everyone who touches the distance learner to understand why these students leave their online courses, and what it will take to keep them there.
Effective Group Work Strategies for the College Classroom
From understanding course content to developing problem solving, teamwork, and communication skills, group work is an effective teaching strategy whose lessons may endure well beyond the end of a course. So why is it that so many students (and some faculty) hate it?
Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning Tools: 15 Strategies for Engaging Online Students Using Real-time Chat, Threaded Discussions and Blogs
Opportunities for meaningful synchronous and asynchronous interaction are plentiful, provided you design and facilitate your online course in the correct manner and with the proper tools. This free report provides practical advice from educators who’ve found effective ways to promote learning and build a sense of community in their online courses.
Best Practices for Training and Retaining Online Adjunct Faculty
As colleges and universities continue to expand their online course offerings, increasingly they’re turning to adjuncts to teach the courses. This report features proven strategies for ensuring your distance education faculty have the necessary training and support to succeed.
Faculty Promotion and Tenure: Eight Ways to Improve the Tenure Review Process at Your Institution
This special report will provide you with new perspectives on the promotion and tenure process. Some will challenge your thinking. Others will confirm your suspicions. All will lend valuable perspective to your academic tenure and personnel policies.
Tips for Encouraging Student Participation in Classroom Discussions
A lot of students seem to assume that as long as the assigned work is completed on time, test scores are good, and attendance is satisfactory, they shouldn’t be forced to participate. This special report will help you create favorable conditions for more active classroom discussions.
Distance Learning Administration and Policy: Strategies for Achieving Excellence
Although distance learning is no longer in its infancy, there are still a lot of unknowns. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the questions and the possibilities of what you want your online program to look like today … not to mention five years from now. Here’s your chance to take advantage some of the best practices learned by those who blazed the trail before you.
Assessing Online Learning: Strategies, Challenges and Opportunities
If you want insight into how to assess online learning at the course, program, and institutional levels, you’ll want to download this new special report that will help you create more effective online assessment exercises and strategies.
Philosophy of Teaching Statements: Examples and Tips on How to Write a Teaching Philosophy Statement
Writing a philosophy of teaching statement can make even the most experienced educator feel intimidated. Motivate students? No problem. Juggle an endless list of responsibilities? Check. Make course content come alive? Done. But when it comes to putting their teaching philosophy to paper, it’s hard to even know where to start.
10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education
Despite the many benefits, teaching online also comes with its share of challenges. This special report will help you establish online instructor best practices and performance expectations for creating a successful teaching and learning experience.
Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator
All too often new administrators are left to fend for themselves when it comes to discovering and developing the skills they need to succeed in their new position. This report will help new administrators navigate the potential minefields and find their voice when it comes to leading effectively.
Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments
Professors often believe students should arrive on campus knowing how to write research papers. Unfortunately, many do not. Download this free report for proven assignment strategies that are easy to implement.
11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses
If you think the flexibility of online teaching also means that it’s OK to “wing it” now and then, you’d be wrong. If anything, you have to be more organized, more consistent and more prepared for anything than ever before.
Twitter in Higher Education: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty
A survey of approximately 2,000 higher education professionals found that 30.7 percent use Twitter. More than half (56.4 percent) say they’ve never used Twitter. This report examines how college faculty are using Twitter, and why some believe the micro-blogging service is a colossal waste of time.
Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning
What we teach and how we teach it are inextricably linked. This special report helps you discover new ways to build strong connections between the two with strategies for engaging students, giving feedback, creating a climate for learning, and more.
Faculty Development in Distance Education: Issues, Trends and Tips
Of the many lessons learned from the early years of distance education one of the most persistent to remain, and thankfully so, is the fact that you cannot simply pluck an instructor out of the classroom, plug him into an online course, and expect him to be effective in this new and challenging medium.
Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom
One of the most challenging tasks instructors face is keeping students engaged. Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom will help you meet that challenge while ensuring your classroom is a positive and productive learning environment.
Online Course Quality Assurance: Using Evaluations and Surveys to Improve Online Teaching and Learning
In order to improve online programs, courses, and instruction, you have to first determine your goals, select metrics that will tell you what we want to know, analyze these metrics for clues about needed changes, and then make those changes. It may sound simple, but it isn’t.
Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges
It’s been said that no one dreams of someday becoming an academic administrator. It’s a tough job that’s only gotten more challenging as budgets shrink, public scrutiny rises, and responsibilities continue to grow. But what does it really take to be an effective leader?
Teaching Mistakes from the College Classroom
If you’re like most educators, you probably made your share of teaching mistakes. This report features more than a dozen essays by instructors who were willing to share their early-career missteps and the lessons they learned. Because sometimes you just have to follow your gut, and sometimes your gut is wrong.
Course Design and Development Ideas That Work
This 17-page report features proven course design alternatives implemented in courses of varying sizes and disciplines. It’s sure inspire you to rethink how you could change certain components of your courses to build a better learning environment.
Promoting Academic Integrity in Online Education
Online education didn’t invent cheating, but it does present unique challenges. This 20-page report provides proactive ways for meeting these challenges head on.
Faculty Focus: Non-Traditional Students: Understanding Adult Learners’ Needs
By: Mary Bart in Trends in Higher Education - June 9, 2010
Students dropout of college for a variety of reasons – some are not ready for the academic rigors, while others leave to raise a family, get a job, or join the military. Many of these students are now in their 30s, 40s and 50s. They’re more mature, and they’re ready to come back and finish what they started. Is your school truly committed to do what it takes to attract and support these students through degree completion? The adult degree completion market offers a growing and potentially lucrative opportunity for higher education institutions nationally. According to Dr. Bruce Chaloux, president of the Sloan Consortium, there are more than 50 million working age adults with some college credit but no degree, or who have a high school diploma but never entered college.
During the recent online video seminar Effective Strategies for the Adult Degree Completion Market, Chaloux pointed out that many of these adults would like to get their college degrees, but only if they’re given practical “adult friendly” alternatives to traditional, campus-based programs.
The eight key factors that influence an adult learner’s decision to attend college are:
•Convenient time and place for classes
•Flexible pacing for completing the program
•Ability to transfer credits
•Reputation of institution as being adult friendly
•Need the degree for current or future job
•Receive credit for life/work experiences
•Financial aid or employer assistance
•Child care
How well you can meet these needs, and provide adults with the flexibility and support they require to complete their degrees will determine how successful your institution is in serving this growing student population. Not surprisingly, online or blended courses are particularly attractive to adults who are often juggling family and work responsibilities along with their coursework.
Chaloux shared with attendees a set of guiding principles developed by the Southern Regional Education Board of the factors it believes are essential to meet the needs of the adult degree completion population:
•Online or blended delivery
•Accelerated (or compressed) terms
•Adult friendly policies
•Supportive credit transfer and prior learning assessment
“These are the kinds of strategies that have proven, at least in the short run, to be quite effective at not only attracting the adults back to your campus but in getting them to degree completion,” says Chaloux. “Essentially what we are arguing is that you need to create greater pathways to degrees and provide some form of hope that they can complete their degree in a reasonable amount of time."
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