IDEA:

Lisa Lane of Lisa’s Online Teaching Blog shares a cool way of sparking discussion in herusing a laptop. a laptop. using a laptop. online history class. She uses pictures and video clips to accompany her discussion questions. I never thought of that. I will be revamping my course in January, so I may have to give this a try.

EXAMPLE:

Throughout my class, I try to disrupt misconceptions and biases teachers may have about people with disabilities. One way I could use pictures is to post a description of a student with a disability and description of one without and then have my students match the description with one of two pictures of students The pictures would be such that disabilities or lack thereof could not be detected by just looking at the photo.

The purposes of this exercise would be:

1. to emphasize that many disabilities like learning disabilities and ADHD are “invisible”
2. to point out that teachers need to get to know students as individuals
3. to demonstrate that simply knowing a student’s diagnoses does not necessarily tell us information we can use as teachers, and
4. to foster the idea that students are more alike than different

YOUR TURN:

I am sure I can think of other ways to use pictures to start discussions. If you have ideas from your own teaching, please share in the comments.

My class is built around discussions. I like for students to engage in genuine exchanges with each other I don’t want just teacher-student interaction or students to simply post in order to earn points (although there will always be some of those in a graded environment. )

With a class of 30 students making at least four posts each week, there’s no time to respond to every post each student makes, so I try to be selective in my participation. As in any class, there will be students who post longer comments and comment more frequently than others, so I try to respond to different students each week. Read the rest of this entry »

Leigh Blackall shares his thoughts on teaching vs. facilitating on his Learn Online blog.

I feel like I teach more than facilitate, because that’s what my particular students need/want from me, but I would rather facilitate. What are your thoughts on the quandary in which Leigh and many of us who teach online find ourselves? Is it inherently bad pedagogy to teach rather than facilitate?

For me, different students and different content require different strategies. I would love to hear your thoughts

Teaching the same course several times a year can get monotonous. That’s not good for your or your students. Although those of us who teach online have a variety of tools and modalities to grab students’ attention, it is always nice to add variety.

Rita-Marie Conrad and J. Ana Donaldson have gathered ideas from online instructors from all over. Their book, Engaging the Online Learner: Activities and Resources for Creative Instruction (Online Teaching and Learning Series (OTL) is full of so many ideas that neither you nor your students will not get bored for a long while. Read the rest of this entry »

In my latest class, I used the calendar feature of eCollege to post the due dates for posts and assignments. I had not done this before because I felt that students are adults–surely they can manage their own time. Most of my students are teachers themselves, so they should realize the importance of turning assignments in on time. I posted due dates in three places as it was:

• In the syllabus,
• On an Overview of Assignments Page, and
• In the directions for the assignments themselves.

Nevertheless, this fourth reminder did help. Instead of about 5-7 late submissions, I had only 3. How great not having to grade so many straggling assignments in my spare minutes!

I can’t help but think, though, that most on ground teachers give students the syllabi, and that’s it. Students sink or swim. Do online students need more supports like this? I know that in my on ground learning experiences fellow students reminded each other of big assignments as we hung out or walked between classes. My students don’t have this peer support.

What do you think? Am I a supporters or an enabler? Am I hand-holding too much? Please share you opinion in the comments.

I am taken aback by the number of excuses I receive from students. I was always afraid to ask for leniency from my instructors, even when I knew my disability made the assignments longer to complete. The only time I asked for more time was when I learned my mother was dying and spending time with her was more important than any class or assignment.

Some delays, because of illness or technical problems, are easy for me to forgive, Read the rest of this entry »

For seven years, I have taught an online course on inclusion for general education teachers. The goal of the course is to help teachers accommodate students with disabilities in their classrooms.

At the heart of my course is the concept of universal design for learning (UDL), which proposes that learning should be multimodal in order to accommodate various learning styles. I assign readings from Rose and Meyer’s Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning.

In a nutshell, UDL relies on three principals:

1. Information should be presented in multiple formats (lectures, texts, audio, video, kinesthetic activities)

2. Students need flexible options for demonstrating what they have learned, through writing, presentations, skits, PowerPoints, art projects, models, etc.

3. Learning experiences should have flexible ways of engaging students so that they are interested and motivated.

A few weeks ago, I realized that I may not be as good as I should be about modeling UDL. Read the rest of this entry »