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Social presence remains the key to a successful learning experience, and understanding social presence, with its critical connection to learning and community building, allows us to better support faculty and students. Understanding a wide selection of tools, media, and reflective activities helps faculty assist students in taking responsibility for their own learning. Providing iterative feedback and mindful assessments helps faculty meet learning outcomes and guide student learning. Implementing change in small steps is the key to understanding which strategies work and which lead to frustration and discontent.

"In 2014, the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning embarked on a research project to investigate elements of effective teaching and learning practice valued at Vancouver Island University (VIU). Our investigation resulted in conversations with faculty and students in defining the elements of teaching practice valued at VIU. Faculty from the existing Community of Scholarly Teaching Practice (CoSTP) and students from the VIU community were invited to contribute their ideas about regarding effective teaching and learning design and practice. These consultations have generated a list of themes which capture practices most valued at VIU. "

" humans are more important than technology, but inspiring faculty should be our goal. Our organizational cultures need to embrace online learning as unique. We need to be supporting faculty by immersing them in engaging, meaningful online classes as part of their preparation to becoming great online instructors. When our organizational practices convey a hierarchy between face-to-face and online classes, that hierarchy will translate into the attitudes of the instructors who teach those classes."

"Stanford faculty members are playing a leading role in exploring online education - and a number of them are now sharing experiences about their activities and what they are learning in a new series of videos available on the Stanford Online website."

"Students who use OER find them to be accessible, relevant, and engaging. Over 60 percent of students reported that the overall quality of their learning experience in an OER course was higher in comparison to a typical, non- OER course. Though creating OER courses and degrees is time consuming, instructors in several colleges said they had made changes in instruction as a result of working with OER materials. Though few instructors made changes to their pedagogical practices specific to OER, use of these materials allowed them to align materials better with their learning goals. Instructors already using student-centered and hands-on learning strategies said that the OER materials helped what they were already doing. Several instructors also reported that students were more engaged with OER materials compared to textbooks, because they are better tailored to good pedagogy, reading materials are more relevant and interesting, and students can be more involved in the construction of the learning experience."

"They perceived they had overcome most obstacles, but that others at their institutions had not.   They did not believe that others were teaching courses that were on par with face-to-face classes in terms of quality. This is because of findings 2 and 3. The second finding was that the overwhelming majority did not feel support from their institutions when transitioning to online modalities, rather they indicated that experiential learning in the form of mentorship, learning by doing, and dialog with peers were most critical when overcoming the challenges. The third finding was that the majority of participants indicated the time required for preparation and intrusion of time on an ongoing basis during the course of an online class were significantly greater than time requirements of a face-to-face course."

"Almost 25 years have passed since Chickering and Gamson offered seven principles for good instructional practices in undergraduate education. While the state of undergraduate education has evolved to some degree over that time, I think the seven principles still have a place in today's collegiate classroom. Originally written to communicate best practices for face-to-face instruction, the principles translate well to the online classroom and can help to provide guidance for those of us designing courses to be taught online."

...Just in time!! :)

The authors lay out four "pillars" of practice, conveniently chosen to form FLIP as an acronym: Flexible environment (Students are allowed a variety of modes of learning and means of assessment) Learning culture (Student-centered communities of inquiry rather than instructor-centered lecture) Intentional content (Basically this means placing content in the most appropriate context - direct instruction prior to class for individual use, video that's accessible to all students, etc.) Professional educator (Being a reflective, accessible instructor who collaborates with other educators and takes responsibility for perfecting one's craft)

"So what makes an online class feel less like it's taught by a bot and more like it's a human-centered experience? The following three principles and related strategies will help faculty keep humans front-and-center of their online courses:"

"I am particularly excited by the plans we have for what we're calling "MOOC-supported learning communities," in which local groups of MOOC participants benefit from and contribute to the overall MOOC experience, as well as our plans to share the materials we develop for the MOOC (videos, assignments, other resources) in an open-source fashion."

Whatever knowledge the students have consists of "small disconnected islets" in a vast sea of ignorance. Those scattered bits don't add up to much: "It was obvious that whatever they knew they had learned in an entirely mechanical manner, and they could only gape in a sort of dull bewilderment when asked to think for themselves."

What's more, 60 percent of the students responding said they saw an overall big positive effect on the classroom atmosphere, and 67 percent said they were able to concentrate a lot better in class without the phones.