Learning to Teach Online

"Part 1: WHAT? A comparison of the seven most widely used online course design rubrics, along with their collective strengths and limitations Part 2: SO WHAT? A discussion of why using these rubrics has become so important, and some early evidence of impact Part 3: NOW WHAT? Recommendations for what the rubric providers and adopters should do next to increase online student success further"

This about high-enrollment courses, but there are many ideas to consider for teaching any online course. Abstract: "Class size has been a popular topic for decades. There is renewed interest in this topic now with the growth of online learning. Online courses can accommodate hundreds, if not thousands, of students in a single course. Very little research, though, has been conducted recently on class size in online courses and the research that has been conducted is mixed. As the demand for online courses increases, so likely will class size. In this exploratory study, we investigated the perceptions and experiences of 37 faculty teaching high-enrollment online courses. In the following article, we report the results of our inquiry, implications for practice, and areas for additional research."

From the abstract: "As online education continues to grow, instructors from traditional classrooms are being asked to design online courses. In this study, data from interviews with thirty-three public four-year college and university instructors, who had experience designing online courses, were used to understand the instructor's perspective on online course design. "

List of categories of ways to create presence would be of interest to those teaching online.

Online students don't have to work alone

"Many institutions use a one-size-fits-all approach to faculty development for online teaching, which does not meet the needs of faculty who often have different levels of expe- rience, skill, and self-efficacy in online teaching and learning. To address these issues, the [university name removed] [center name removed] designed and implemented an online teaching readiness self-assessment."

"Dianne Conrad and Jason Openo's approach takes the reader on a philosophical, yet accessible tour of high-quality assessment options for authentic learning in online spaces."

This paper includes the definition for a model for the assessment of the quality of on-line teaching based on an audit by specialised technical personnel who are independent of the design of the teaching materials and which could be a proposal for the higher education quality assurance models of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA).

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

Originally a course for TWU in Blackboard, it is now available on the web. You can work through it on your own, or use it as a course for faculty PD. Write the author for assignments, practice activities, and the support provided to TWU participants.