Inspire Blog Category: Teaching

Re-imagining your online office hours

So, you’re thinking about offering virtual office hours in your online class. Your instructional designer is thrilled! Virtual office hours are a great way to promote social connection and build community with your students. But, you’re nervous. Maybe you’ve tried offering virtual office hours before. Maybe you’ve heard from colleagues that students aren’t going to show up to your office hours. Maybe one student will show up. Maybe five. Or three. Or none. Maybe you’re not sure how to prepare. You want your students to come with questions. Maybe your students will come with tons of questions. Maybe they won’t. Just as you can’t–or shouldn’t–teach an online course in the same way that you would teach an on-campus course, you … Re-imagining your online office hours
by · December 14, 2018

Ready-to-Use Online Teaching Tips

Beauty is everywhere and in every moment, if we pay attention. I saw this beautiful sunrise driving by Eureka, Nevada on Highway 50, the loneliest road in America, during the tail of my one-week road trip vacation. Similarly, good teaching practices are flourishing in OSU online courses as we discover from our talks with Ecampus instructors. To inspire you to expand your teaching toolkit, here are some ready to use online teaching tips from the book “Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning” by James Lang.  Teaching Strategies Online Teaching Tips Retrieving Syllabus Quiz Weekly reading journals Frequent quizzing such as quizlet practices or weekly quizzes predicting Pretesting with immediate grading and immediate feedback including exposure of content teaching; Role play: how might … Ready-to-Use Online Teaching Tips
by · February 2, 2018

Sign on the Virtual Line: Group Contracts as a Tool to Promote Accountability

If you’d like to adopt group work in your online course, but want to ensure accountability among your students, consider asking your students to create a group contract to guide their work. Beginning online group work with a mutually agreed upon contract creates a blueprint for the project, and it facilitates the process of students establishing norms and expectations within their group. These norms help to remove the instructor as the sole authority figure, and instead give the team the power to hold one another accountable, according to the guidelines they agree upon, rather than just personal opinions or perceptions. One way to help your students begin to think about what to include in their group contract is to initiate … Sign on the Virtual Line: Group Contracts as a Tool to Promote Accountability
by · November 15, 2016