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There is a debate taking place in the world of education. It is not a new debate but recently it has gathered new energy and the boundary between polite discussion of opposing views and hostility has been stretched. The debate is that between those who are advocates of inquiry based learning and those who believe direct instruction produces the best outcomes. - This article explore how the debate has gone wrong and fails to serve the needs of learners.

How to prevent cheating! Everyone asks me this when I tell them I want to be an online instructor. Good reading.

Unfortunately, I was one of the students in this course. I was curious to see how this course would compare to some of the courses I'd taken at UW-Stout in e-learning and online teaching (content wise). From the start I felt like the course was very difficult in its instruction to students and it went down hill from there. It seemed as if the instructor was trying to fit the same methodology for a course with 40 students to a course 40,000. I'm certain there are many lessons to be learned. Looking at the bright side, it's likely that some research may come from this debacle and there will be improvements in the methodology of instruction for MOOCs. Currently, a MOOC course feels more like an online self-directed training course rather than an academic course with all the bells, whistles and ENGAGEMENT of a really well designed online experience.

Suggestions for creating effective rubrics.

Plan courses to build learning experiences within the course and in the sequence of the courses.

online module is designed to assist pre-service teachers in developing unit pla

A couple of things caught my eye with this article 1. No limit on enrollment size, really? 2. I like the live screencast and ability to interact with the live class 3. If the course is free, why would anyone enroll at UC Berkeley? I know the obvious answer to number 3, but are we looking at a shift in education where individuals are formally educated without a formal degree. Isn't that the idea behind Khanacademy.org.

This article is from the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching and discusses the uses and limits of Wikis.

Website for Vancouver Island University and the VIU Teaching & Learning Centre. Contains a nice overview of Web 2.0 and many useful links to additional sites.

First year Spanish lessons linked to grammar and vocabulary activities. Two levels of access: free and premium. Teachers affiliated to public and private institutions can purchase the premium side and then offer in to their students. Good grammar activities but not so good for vocab The side has a teacher and an instructor side

Very comprehensive site for materials related to teaching ESL on line. A very useful site both for students and teachers.

Excellent reference site for many useful tools for classroom enrichment.

A book review that doesn't necessarily agree with the idea that online ed is fundamentally different from regular classes. Find some theory and some application.

Center for Research on Teaching and Learning, Here is a large collection of links to further reading in best practices for teaching online.

This web page is full of links from a variety of major universities. The links cover all areas of online teaching - from questioning, to instructional strategies, to best practice for online teaching. Great source for anyone looking to research effective online teaching.

Free recording web tool

Open source software for recording and editing oral activities in the online delivery of FL instruction. Students download it and can record oral activities and saved them. They can also upload it to a CMS to share with peers and instructor. It is important to remember to save in a format that will be recognizable. Students can create a single project by adding and editing different individual files in a single one.

Audacity is an awesome (and free) tool for basic recording, editing, and playback. I use it to record my choral rehearsals, record individual singers during private lessons, and create practice tracks that can be posted online so students can learn and/or reinforce their part in a piece of music we are rehearsing in class. The interface is relatively simple and the options for the music classroom (or even the general education classroom) are numerous! 

Overview of multiple instructional strategies

ION is a terrific resource. Thank you for sharing it with us.

"Instructional Strategies for Online Courses "