Grading is always a time-consuming and often opaque process: we spend so much time justifying a letter or percentage grade, teasing out the differences between an 89% and a 91%. Our students, too, spend so much of their time vying for the highest grade, figuring out exactly what needs to be done to get that …
Written by
Allison Tharp
Online Discussions
Discussions are the lifeblood of our classrooms; they can be for our virtual classrooms as well. See ideas below. Discussion Creation Make the first discussion post low stakes so students can get used to the LMS technology. Often, this can be an introductory approach; encourage students to practice with including media like photographs. Perhaps obvious, …
Digital Accessibility
Accessibility is always important, but it might be even more so in an entirely online or a hybrid course. Ensuring students have access to everything they need to succeed is absolutely doable! Universal Design for Learning (UDL): UDL is a framework that helps to maximize learning and remove barriers for everyone involved. The idea is …
Engagement in the online class
Engagement is key to all teaching modalities, but it’s harder to implement in an online course. The Community of Inquiry Framework contends that there are three aspects of online learning that must converge: teaching presence (instructor presence and course design), social presence (peer-to-peer, peer-to-instructor, peer-to-content), and cognitive presence (learning stimulated through social interaction). High teaching …