Online Teaching Strategies and Articles, Papers, and Reports

A faculty development survey analyzed what faculty want and need to be successful teaching online.

Educational games and simulations can engage students in higher-level cognitive thinking, such as interpreting, analyzing, discovering, evaluating, acting, and problem solving. Recent technical advances in multiplayer, user-created virtual worlds have significantly expanded the capabilities of user interaction and development within these simulated worlds. This ability to develop and interact with your own simulated world offers many new and exciting educational possibilities. This article explores the technical capabilities and educational potential of these new worlds. Additionally, it presents and illustrates a model, which uses interaction combinations, to identify course content and topics having educational applications in virtual worlds.

The default design of commercial course management systems limits instructional creativity and pedagogical approaches, particularly for novice users.

Higher ed learns how to live in a virtual world.

 “The movement toward open content forces us to really think about what value it is we bring to students who enroll at the Open University. I think that we are getting to that tipping point—rethinking the underlying pedagogy with which we have conventionally delivered distance education and open learning.”

"During the past year, rich Internet applications (RIAs) -- have started to take off in the Web
2.0 space, gaining traction in a number of different areas, including education."Rich Internet application" refers to a development metaphor that allows a much higher level of expressiveness, so that the overall user experience is improved. Most RIAs incorporate audio or visual elements to make the experience
all the more engaging."

The author provides guidelines and tips to for instructors reduce cheating when they use objective exams in online courses.

A checklist of the best strategies for designing and delivering online courses to train online faculty.

Attrition continues to be a major issue in higher education. Attrition rates for classes taught through distance education are 10 - 20% higher than classes taught in a face-to-face setting. Educators should engage students early and often, using different learning strategies customized to the class content and the students' pre-existing knowledge. The goal for the professor is to develop relationships with the students such that they feel comfortable in the environment. The professor should facilitate learner-learner integration and collaboration so that they will learn from one another and expand their knowledge base together. Through an integrative literature review, this article presents key concepts in online learning and a review of different methods of engaging students with the goals of enhancing the learning process and reducing attrition rates.

The author provides a long and comprehensive list of resources concerning teaching and learning with technology.