High school students talk about what teachers do and don't do to engage them in learning.

Researchers are saying the most pervasive learning disability in schools--and the major challenge for UDL--is emotional--changing the perspective of tuned out students.

This is a succinct summary of the UDI goals in creating a course.

The uphill struggle to implement OER at a university.

This is a succinct, two-page summary of OERs. It would be useful background to hand out to students.

This study sets out criteria--pluses and pitfalls--to judge the effectiveness of online collaborative learning. And its conclusion summarizes with good advice: don't be afraid to overhaul and seek new methods if you find the collaboration isn't working.

Following up on Brent's post on Justine Sacco, here is a feature story one of my students wrote last semester on public shaming at Emory. You also can go to her podcast which you might find interesting despite its length and annoying undertone of typing.

An interesting idea: student collaboration to lead and facilitate online discussions. This study says the student leaders elicited meaningful dialogue, high levels of participation and quality conversation.

Researchers say that some online students don't like group work. How to deal with dissonance? One idea is to have students list their reasons and then discuss. Another is to show them a video on collaboration and team-building. There are a lot of lousy team-building videos on YouTube. But here's a fun and engaging Ted Talk presentation. Why are kindergarteners better at collaboration than business school students? Tune in.

This study focuses on the presence of the teacher in the virtual classroom and how the instructor interacts with the students. Can an instructor's behavior encourage more student activity? Certainly, but it has to be more than the occasional "well done," the authors say. Students want more teacher presence, specifically more frequent responses, more acknowledgement of individuals' contribution, and more suggestions and guidance related to a specific response. So the bottom line is try to respond to individual students rather than a group and customize your comments as much as possible. You will have more engaged students.

Andragogy--self-directed learning--is making a comeback, thanks to online education. But why did Malcolm Knowles, its author, and the approach based on educating adults lose interest among educators? This article delves into why it faded from favor and why it's on the rebound.

I liked the article in this week's reading on creating an interactive syllabus and found this article about how writing students contributed to an interactive course syllabus. This resonated with me since I teaching writing courses.

What happens when well-known universities offer online courses, assessments, and certificates of completion for free? This is a report on the second year of the experiences of Harvard and MIT.

This study of 80 faculty breaks out how they spend their time while teaching online.