If you are considering teaching online or are looking for ideas to freshen-up your current online course, you have come to the right resource. Designing for the online environment presents unique challenges, but it also opens a world of exciting possibilities for engaging students in their learning.
The theoretical difference between formative and summative assessment strategies is explored in this paper as well as the fact that on-line assessment is a new field of study with very little written about it.
The University of Toronto performed a study on the relationship to class size, class participation and grades. It included 25 courses with 25 instructors and 341 students. The conclusion was that students performed well in small online classes and that performance, defined as participation and grades, declined proportionally as class size increased. The study also looked at small group activities and found that large class performance improved by using small group activities. It also emphasized the importance of the software used for the small group discussions.
This is an unpublished research article on a model for group work in an online or blended course environment. The two salient points in this article are that the students must have unique skills for the online classroom. First they must be taught how to use the necessary technologies for collaboration and the second is that they must be taught social skills for online collaboration. The first point seems obvious, but I think the second point is often overlooked. We assume that students know how to interact with others, however interacting online is quite different than in person. Therefore these skills must be included in our curriculum.
This also is another fairly short read from the pre-digital era (ie, 1990s). (I'm trying to spare you all the 21-page scholarly works). If you looked at the learning object at the CoI community of inquiry, this parallels the short video about traditional education models and preparing students to be nimble, active and adaptable thinkers in rapidly changing environments - something we worry about a lot in healthcare education.
This is a pretty short, not-too-challenging read with some good ideas and strategies for having teachers (K-12, but certainly could be extended to include higher ed instructors) incorporate more resources into their classrooms and learning environments. The article is from 2002, but the strategies still seem sound.
The survey sought to dig deeper on the quality question, asking respondents which aspects of credit-bearing online courses they think can be better than, or at least equal to, those of in-person courses.
Faculty members say they think online courses are the same quality as or better than face-to-face classes in terms of grading and communicating about grading, and in communicating with the college about logistical and other issues. and professors were split 50/50 (the same or better vs. lower quality) on online courses' "ability to deliver the necessary content to meet learning objectives."
"Much of the faculty consternation in the last year about how institutions (and, increasingly, state legislators) want to use online education has revolved around the perceived quality of online offerings (although there are undoubtedly undercurrents of concern about whether colleges and universities will use technology to diminish the role of, and ultimately the need for, instructors)."
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/survey/survey-faculty-attitudes-technology#ixzz38WwyClaW
Inside Higher Ed
I think it's interesting that indicators of 'quality' that were considered important (by faculty) included whether or not the online course was offered for credit. But, there are plenty of for-credit courses offered at accredited colleges in a traditional format that are pretty....bad. and I think that the EFOT course has given us the clear indication that online courses almost need instructors MORE than traditional f2f courses.
Downloaded the free 40 page book from this site. Logic + emotion = learning. Some really great tips about adult learners. Hints on visual design, "telling a story to engage the learner." allowing them to finish the story and lot of other jewels in these 40 pages. Great find!
Resources for Web 2.0 technologies and composition pedagogy From Writer/Designer: a Guide to Making Multimodal Projects
By Kristin L. arola, Jennifer Sheppard, & Cheryl Ball
A huge list of Design Models including: Postmodern PhenomenologicAl Models Constructivist Models   (see Also Constructivism) Action ReseArch (PArticipAtory Design Models) Activity Theory (ArtifAct-mediAted And object-oriented Action) Anchored Instruction (John BrAnsford) Andrgogy (MAlcom Knowles) Cognitive Apprenticeship (Collins, Brown And NewmAn) Cognitive Flexibility Theory (RAnd Spiro) GenerAtive LeArning - Merlin C.
This paper combines two of our course's concerns: the importance of social presence in the online classroom (deNoyelles et al. 2014) and instructional design. It refers to the aDDIE model of instructional design in order to optimize effective social presence in the online classroom, and lists several course design strategies in the final section (pp. 676-678) to increase the student perception of valuable instructor social presence.
This article talks about using the aDDIE model to design a one-shot library session. Since that is what I do, I may have to take another look at aDDIE.
The Sloan-C 2013 International Conference on Online Learning Proceedings provides interesting research and ideas for online learning, teaching and evaluation.
Faculty learning communities provide their members with both information and support as they move toward utilizing digital technology tools, learn new skills, and share meaningful instructional practices... This is off-topic for M3 , but it occur to me that we have established a learning community among ourselves with the above goals.