Anytime that I've taught a course to adult learners, I've found periodic feedback to be an essential component of continuous improvement and meeting students needs. This has always been anonymous. If I am to continue doing this throughout the course, I'll need to find a tool to allow for anonymous input.
4. Understands and uses instructional pedagogy that is appropriate for the online environment and meets the multiple learning needs of students (ITS 4)
This standard seems incredibly important because it drives home the point that computers don't teach, teachers teach and sometimes they use a computer as an instructional tool. Effective online learning still requires the continuous involvement of a qualified teacher (content and pedagogy), not just develop the content for someone else to put on a website and then let the computer do the teaching.
• Maintains an online social presence that is available, approachable, positive, interactive, and sincere (SREB C.3, Varvel VII.A)
• Creates a learning community that encourages collaboration and interaction, including student-teacher, student-student, and student-content (SREB D.2, Varvel VII.B, ITS 6.a)
These statements go along with my previous comment about the need for online teachers to be involved in the online learning process throughout the course and to interact with their students.