Communication

Kick off an online course with an asynchronous goal-setting icebreaker where students can form community and intentional goals for the course. This activity can be extended with goal progress check-ins throughout the semester for continued engagement.

Online discussion forums provide students an opportunity to engage with one another and with their instructors on topics relevant to the course. They can be effective in creating community and can reassure students that their contributions to the class are of value. Additionally, they provide a space in which students can be experts, sharing their…

With more higher education experiences moving online, students have fewer opportunities to practice their verbal communication skills compared to traditional face-to-face environments. Speeches, presentations, and recitations that students might engage in within a traditional brick and mortar classroom may be less feasible online, and students also miss out on the typical questioning, conversation, and interaction…

Description Developing oral communication skills is included as a learning objective for many general education programs and courses, however, implementation and assessment of such skills varies by course and instructor (Sapia et al., 2020).  Different forms of oral communication are incorporated into online introductory or upper-level courses. These include synchronous discussions as well as more…

When teaching in an online course it is vital to engage students and create a connection and sense of community (Flock, 2020). Student engagement is an important component of student success and increased academic outcomes (Rioch & Tharp, 2022). The Community of Inquiry theoretical framework suggests addressing three components when designing online courses that include…

Building community through food poetry is a strategy that can be applied across curriculum and for online and blended teaching.

As an online instructor, do you feel frustrated when students do not read your course announcements, discussions, e-mails, or other written communication? What if we could capture attention by borrowing online marketing copywriting secrets designed to cut through life’s distractions? Online marketers are copywriting masters. Copy is text-based content that persuades readers to act (Dodds,…

Anyone involved in an online course, whether that person is the instructor or student, can find the absence of face-to-face communications challenging for one primary reason: interaction or the lack thereof.  To address the interaction issue, Krause (2020) stresses the importance of building a community through exercises that involve connectedness and shape relational trust. Wehler…

Competency-based education (CBE) is an alternative modality of learning. Instead of courses, a CBE program is comprised of competencies and rigorous assessments. Students progress through the program by successfully passing competency assessments. CBE is a valuable option for non-traditional students who have work experience. With prior knowledge of a specific competency, a student may choose…

Research shows that students perform better when the rubric provided by an instructor is deconstructed for them (Jones 2017). This allows the students to see not only how they are going to be graded, but why they are going to be graded that way. The ideas for the evaluation categories on the rubric came from…