Featured Higher Education Presenters: Samantha Streamer-Veneruso and Tammy Stuart Peery
Date: Wednesday, 02/23/11
Time: 12:00-1:15 PM CST
Cost: $249 ($274 after 02/16/11)
Email: mailto:support@magnapubs.com
The following is an excerpt from a recent Online Classroom article by Tammy Stuart Peery and Samantha Streamer Veneruso. On February 23 they will lead the Magna Online Seminar How to Balance Online Learner Needs and Instructor Workload.
Instructor workload in online courses can be overwhelming. However, creating a community of learners that encourages students to take more responsibility for their learning fosters deeper learning for the students and can allow the instructor to manage his or her workload more effectively.
There are a number of ways to encourage student-to-student interaction in online courses. Of utmost importance is setting the expectation for student participation from the first day they log in to the course. The course syllabus should set clear guidelines for participation expectations (number of posts, frequency of posts, types of posts, sample student posts) as well as netiquette expectations.
The instructor does need to plan to be more frequently present in the first few weeks to encourage and reinforce this participation. It’s particularly important that instructors notice when students aren’t participating and give them a gentle nudge to reinforce how important their interaction is through an email or phone call. A strong, encouraging presence at the beginning helps to retain students and demonstrate that their presence is important.
As the course progresses, each major assignment should have a student-to-student interactive component that is clearly explained and modeled in the assignment description. In addition, students should be provided with rubrics or other measures that clearly indicate how their interaction with each other will be assessed and why it’s important to their understanding of the material.
When instructors clearly communicate a relevant purpose for the interaction as well as a clear assessment method, students become more confident and interested in participating. Another element that is especially key is including a self-reflective component, where students can think about how and when they are participating and make a plan for how they might participate even more fully.
Once students are given the opportunity to take stock of how much they’ve done and learned by participating with each other, they really grow to value the opportunities the teacher provides to interact. As a course moves forward, instructors can then be more targeted in their communication with students, sending personalized feedback each week to a different group of students, or summarizing a discussion rather than responding to each post within it. Doing so allows the student interaction to be the focus of the discussion rather than the instructor’s response to each individual being paramount.
About the Presenters
Tammy Stuart Peery has been teaching online for over a decade. An Assistant Professor and English Department Chair at Montgomery College in Germantown, Maryland, she has been the faculty chair of the college’s Distance Learning Task Group for five years.
Samantha Streamer-Veneruso has been a faculty member at Montgomery College in Maryland for over 8 years and is the English Department Chair at the Rockville Campus. Currently in the English Department, she has over 10 years of online teaching experience. She was the lead designer for two of Montgomery College’s online common course templates, which are fully-designed, ready-to-teach online courses.
With One Price, Invite as Many Attendees as You Want
This audio online seminar is priced per connection, which allows you to invite as many attendees as you’d like. You can fill up a classroom or auditorium for the seminar, creating your own community of learners. It’s a value that simply can’t be beat.
Inviting the Right Personnel
While the cost per connection allows you to invite as many people as you’d like, be sure to extend an invitation to your key online educators, including:
•Faculty (full- and part-time)
•Department Chairs
•Instructional Designers
This seminar will apply to anyone at a two- or four-year college.
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