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Does class size matter? http://www.magnapubs.com/newsletter/distance-education-report/270/Does-Class-Size-Matter-13523-1.html This article originally appeared in Distance Education Report. I've been the director of online education at my institution since 2007. One question I've been asked many times over the years is "What is the optimal number of students to have in an online class?" My usual response is to pretend I didn't hear the question and walk away as quickly as possible. Well, that's not totally true. But as you can imagine, this is not an easy question to answer, as there are many variables that come into play--the topic of the class, the overall course design, the academic rank of students in the class, the experience of the instructor teaching the class, etc. I've had many interesting discussions with students, staff and administrators over the years about enrollments in online courses. When I first started teaching online, my courses would fill almost immediately, sometimes within minutes. Inevitably, students would contact me and request an override for the course - not just one or two students, but dozens upon dozens of students. They were usually surprised when I said no. These frustrated students would often reply with a comment such as, "But it's an online class, so you can take unlimited numbers of students and it won't be any additional work for you." Surprisingly, I've heard this kind of comment from some faculty, staff and administrators as well. I usually view these interactions as opportunities to offer a bit of education about online learning. So I might say, for example, that if I had seven graded assignments in my online course, and 25 students, I would end up grading 175 assignments--with the emphasis on "I." However, if I doubled the number of students in my class and graded seven assignments for 50 students, that would be 350 assignments to grade. There were also 22 quizzes, two exams and multiple

" Instructional design is generally executed by instructional designers. According to scholars, instructional designers are typically educators, trained in emerging technologies and pedagogy, who possess specialized skills (Steven, 2013). They must be able to conduct needs assessments, write objectives, and choose content, method, instructional strategies, and best practices (Schwier & Wilson, 2010). Professionally, instructional designers should be able to build interpersonal and trust-worthy relationships, communicate clearly, motivate, solve problems, manage projects and deadlines, outsource, train, and adapt. In addition, instructional designers should be intuitive, supportive, encouraging, organized, persuasive, flexible (Schwier & Wilson, 2010), capable, energetic, pragmatic, and helpful (Stevens, 2013). "

"Given your critique of "online education," I find it ironic that learning designers and others who work day-in, day-out on online (and blended) learning spend much of our time saying similar things to our faculty partners and university stakeholders as you so eloquently articulated in the above quotes. The error that you make, and it is a fundamental error, is that you confuse what is going on at Stanford, Yale, Harvard, M.I.T. with edX and Coursera, with traditional online learning. You write as if you are critiquing online classes, but what you are really taking issue with are the new crop of massively open online courses (MOOCs). This error is not merely semantic. Confusing online learning with MOOCs disallows any meaningful analysis of the challenges and benefits of either format. Conflating online learning with MOOCs also closes the possibility of any substantive discussion of how institutions of higher education are responding to challenges around access, cost and quality. And perhaps most troubling, by conflating online learning with MOOCs you are mischaracterizing and devaluing the hard work of your fellow educators to bring the active learning principles, the principles that you yourself espouse, to new teaching modalities."

Student Reflections @wattspoi on "Heutagogy & its Implications for Evaluative Feedback" http://t.co/xiuWsCsD #lrnchat #edchat

SLN (SUNY Learning Network) Senior Online Instructional Designer http://t.co/4lXQIKWcZM #SUNY Learning Network is looking for an online instructional designer https://t.co/RaLzh0AZ29 #onlinelearning #lrnchat #instructionaldesign

offers a great variety of video resources in several disciplines which SUNY faculty may excerpt to use in their online courses. A list of programming resources, including Annenberg/CPB (see their video catalog http://www.learner.org/catalog/catalog.html ) can be found at the following address: http://www.nyn.suny.edu/cable/programming.htm\ . If you would like to adapt any of these materials to your online course, please send your request to: geotucker@nyn.suny.edu See their online video catalog for a partial list of program providers and their web links. Their web sites are full of print and other materials designed to enhance your experience of these programs.

Faculty participating in quality course reviews have the added benefits of learning from others' course design and teaching practices. Translating their findings from a review of their own courses and others, with expert advisement from an instructional designer, they can put into practice design and facilitation modifications to reduce online students' experiences of transactional distance.

"How NOT to Design a MOOC: The Disaster at Coursera and How to Fix it"

RT @jaymelinton: Top 10 Rules for Developing Your First Online Course http://t.co/0UfXmmp5D1 #elearning

"The Virtual Courseware Project produces interactive, online simulations for the life science laboratory or for earth science field studies. The activities are designed to enhance an existing curriculum and include online assessments. They can be used by students ranging from middle school, high school, or college classrooms. "