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Increasing Engagement With Q&A Forums

September 24, 2021
In online courses, opportunities for student engagement need to be deliberately designed (Martin & Bolliger, 2018). One common way to promote student engagement online is through discussion forums, for which there are widespread established best practices. However, the Q&A discussion forum, which is typically not graded or required, is often thrown into a course without clear intentions or structure. When purposefully designed, a Q&A forum can facilitate the crucial engagement types that are essential to building a community of inquiry in an online classroom, ultimately improving student satisfaction and learning outcomes. These engagement types are student-content, student-student, and student-instructor (Bernard et al., 2009 as cited in Martin & Bolliger, 2018). A Q&A forum should incorporate best practices around all three engagement types.

Instructor Presence in Online Courses

September 24, 2021
Consistent and meaningful instructor presence is one of the most important drivers of student success and satisfaction in online courses (Roddy et al., 2017). However, establishing instructor presence online can be challenging. In fact, studies have shown that many online students feel their instructors are largely invisible (Tichavsky et al., 2015).

Six Strategies for Multimodal Content Delivery

November 02, 2022
If you’re developing a course with synchronous and asynchronous elements, you have a host of options for engaging students and delivering content. Research suggests that incorporating multiple modalities increases accessibility, engagement, and learning (Mick and Middlebrook, 2015; Margolis et al., 2017). With that said, it is important to be intentional about multimodal course design. Both synchronous and asynchronous methods of delivery are effective, but activities can be better suited to one or the other modality and synchronous time is often limited. Delivering selected content asynchronously can support students’ understanding of how information is organized and leave more time for interactivity in synchronous sessions.

Teaching Styles Series: Delegator Style

September 09, 2022
This is the sixth in a series of pieces examining online instructor teaching styles through the lens of Anthony Grasha’s (1994) typology. This piece focuses on the delegator style and how both course developers and instructors can embody this style in online courses.

Teaching Styles Series: Personal Model Style

August 12, 2022
This is the fourth in a series of pieces examining online instructor teaching styles through the lens of Anthony Grasha’s (1994) typology. This piece focuses on the personal model style and how both course developers and instructors can embody this style in online courses.

Teaching Styles Series: Expert Style

July 27, 2022
This is the second in a series of pieces examining online instructor teaching styles through the lens of Anthony Grasha’s (1994) typology. This piece focuses on the expert style and how both course developers and instructors can embody this style in online courses.

LMS Analytics: Supporting Your Students With Data

December 29, 2022
With the help of tools like Canvas New Analytics, faculty can leverage learning management system (LMS) data to hone their instructional techniques and improve their online students' experience. In this piece, we provide an introduction to learning analytics in online higher education and detail some analytics best practices.

Teaching Styles Series: Facilitator Style

August 19, 2022
This is the fifth in a series of pieces examining online instructor teaching styles through the lens of Anthony Grasha’s (1994) typology. This piece focuses on the facilitator style and how both course developers and instructors can embody this style in online courses.

Teaching Styles Series: Formal Authority Style

August 08, 2022
This is the third in a series of pieces examining online instructor teaching styles through the lens of Anthony Grasha’s (1994) typology. This piece focuses on the formal authority style and how both course developers and instructors can embody this style in online courses.

Teaching Styles Series: Introduction

July 19, 2022
This is the first in a series of pieces examining online instructor teaching styles. In this introductory piece, we will characterize teaching styles, summarize Anthony Grasha’s typology of teaching styles, and discuss how identifying your teaching style (or styles) can inform online course design and instruction. In subsequent pieces, we will explore each of Grasha’s teaching styles in depth.