Preparing Students to Facilitate a Webinar

Description Today’s technological environment requires practical skills in online competencies; one of these skills is webinar facilitation. Facilitation is a useful skill to support group in meeting an objective, making a decision, or collaborating more effectively. Facilitation is also the teaching strategy that can be selected for assignments in order to: (1) model for students …

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Use Role Play to Increase Student Engagement in Online Discussions

Description As faculty, we are always trying to both stimulate student engagement and assess learning. One method for increasing student engagement that has been gaining in popularity is engaging students in role play activities. These activities can vary in scale from large, multi-day events (such as Reacting to the Past) to smaller activities contained within …

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Assign Collaborative Experiential Learning while Partnering with Clients

Description While there is sometimes resistance to group collaborations in online learning (Smith et al., 2011), adding a collaborative experiential learning component can more deeply engage students AND provide them the opportunity to develop an array of competencies including “coordinating across time zones and geographic locations, developing computer skills, enhancing internet search skills, and interacting …

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Increase Participation and Engagement in Student Introduction Posts through Narrative

Description It can be difficult for students to connect with each other and with instructors in web-based courses. A number of strategies, design-decisions, and activities can be used to alleviate this issue (Vonderwell, 2003). One commonly used activity is the introduction post – the digital correlate of the in-class introduction. The instructor creates a discussion …

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Set Up an Online Conference for Student Orientation

Description One of the primary concerns of online learning reported by students is feelings of isolation (Abrami & Bures, 1996). Instructional media such as online conferencing could help students feel connected and decrease the sense of isolation (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 2001). Typical Web conferencing tools allow instructors to communicate with students via text, …

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Stop and Pause for Engagement in Online Video Lectures

Description When the majority of instruction takes place in an online environment, it may offer more challenges for monitoring student learning and understanding of course content. Certain pedagogical techniques that combine theories and practices from face-to-face instruction can be infused in online teaching to help address these concerns and keep instruction engaging, rigorous, and responsive …

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Use Online Debates to Enhance Classroom Engagement

Description A debate is a formal competition between two teams, usually with three members each, arguing a discussion statement known as “the moot”. Shaw (2012) believes that debates stimulate critical thinking and can be a highly effective way to actively engage students in research in the online classroom. Student-generated debate presentations can become a welcome …

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Use Pop Culture to Energize Online Activities

Description Researchers agree that students retain more when active, student-centered learning techniques are employed and that fun and engaging learning experiences foster higher information retention (Bonwell and Eison 1991). When teaching large classes online, this can be difficult, but faculty still want to create an environment that is personal and interactive (Carbone 1998). Faculty want …

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Use Synchronous Sessions to Build Community and Connect Globally

Description Only a small percentage of students participate in study abroad programs and many groups are underrepresented. There is little diversity in race, gender and ethnicity nor access for non-traditional, lower socioeconomic groups, those with disabilities and first generation college students (Fischer, 2012). Using synchronous online meeting tools to create globally networked learning experiences can …

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Using GIST Statements for Summary of Learning Content

Description The goal of a GIST statement is to write a summary in a given amount of words (i.e 20 words, 15 words, 10 words). GIST is an acronym that stands for: Generating Interactions between Schemata and Texts (Cunningham, 1982; Herrell, 2000). The instructor can determine the amount of words when writing the GIST statement. …

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