Teaching with Technology

One of the challenges for faculty teaching online is to understand what motivates their students. While studies have been done in traditional environments about why students might succeed or fail in their educational endeavors, not much has been done to analyze motivations and strategies among online learners. Successful learners must be motivated to learn and […]

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Students have been evaluating their instructors for years in traditional classes and those evaluations have been sufficiently validated over the years.  Suzanne Young, in “Student Views of Effective Online Teaching in Higher Education,” was curious about student attitudes specific to online education.  The beginning of her article is a literature review of discussions of the […]

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One method of distance learning delivery is asynchronous, in which students sit through lectures of varying lengths presented using various modalities. In this study from 2006, Pomales-García and Liu, several student responses to these variations were analyzed for their effect. Course modules were delivered using text, voice, and video and the modules had lengths ranging […]

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Faculty have varying levels of reactions to the idea of teaching their courses using distance learning technology. The generic response seems to be that distance education might work for other courses, but not for the courses taught by the professor engaged in the discussion. While it is usually possible to resolve questions about classes involving […]

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Adult learners have consistently been heavy users of distance education because of other demands on their time. While adult student retention has always been a concern, some community colleges (home for many adult learners), have reported substantially higher drop-out rates for online adult learners than for comparable in-class students. Steven Aragon and Elaine Johnson surveyed […]

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During the several years that I have been involved in supporting distance education and working with faculty members who are using, one of the most frequent comments I have heard is about the need to have students come to campus for tests.  With almost no exceptions, every faculty member stresses their concern about student cheating […]

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Cognitive load theory (CLT) is based on the concept that many courses require students to learn and understand more information than is needed for understanding of the intended course material. For example, a course on the use of technology in higher education should focus on how technology would be used and not on the nitty-gritty […]

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One of our challenges in supporting the development and introduction of more online courses is the time spent working with each faculty member one-on-one after they initiate contact and express interest in learning about the process. Despite attempts to organize group sessions, it seems impossible to do so and I eventually devote several hours to […]

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From one perspective, online courses are a modern incarnation of the old-time correspondence classes advertised in comic books and on matchbook covers. Students study a subject with complete time and place independence of their instructor or other students. The old style program provided readings and accompanying assessments to be returned for grading.  Current models leverage […]

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