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There's a big difference between the two!

"Stephen Hersh outlines six steps for how you can create a community of active learning online if you 'use the medium.' "

Free book from the Online Learning Consortium. I like the levels: design (immediate and basic needs), enhance (options to take things up a level), optimize (aligns with highest-quality practices).

"This article advocates that, through collaborative technology‐mediated tasks, we can promote productive language output (spoken and written) and the type of interaction that facilitates language learning and motivates students to continue improving their language skills."

Delivering engaging lessons via video - don't be afraid to let your personality show through!

"Distance learning can feel impersonal and inaccessible, but there are ways to help students feel a sense of connection and access academic material."

Meaningful learner interaction is critical to developing second language skills.... What are some tasks that facilitate interaction and build learner community when teaching and learning online?

"Educators share their best synchronous and asynchronous strategies to boost student participation during online learning."

"The online teachers provided support by building ties to students through interactions via discussion forums and individual communications. Peers also provided support through online forums and webinar-facilitated exchanges. Online teacher and peer student support contributed to the formation of virtual online learning communities. This is important as social and academic integration are mechanisms for retention and success. This research is significant as the numbers of online students have increased markedly in recent times, but student support services do not appear to have changed accordingly. Further, support models for retention and success have not been adequately adapted to suit online learners' needs."

"...it's essential to understand how to build authentic connections with your students to engage them in learning. ...here are my go-to tools for building meaningful connections with students in the digital classroom"

Many of the things they did would apply to building a quality online course as well as a whole program.

5 themes to enhance the online course design experience.