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Posts Tagged ‘teaching online’

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Dec 01

TETC 2009: Wednesday sessions

Wow! I’m so excited to be in Nashville at the Tennessee Educational Technology Conference. It’s been a few years since I’ve been back to TETC, but I’m ready to meet and share with some great teachers, administrators, and technology coordinators/coaches from across Tennessee.

I’ll presenting two sessions today: one on managing communications in online courses and one on project-based learning. All of my resources and links are linked up below to make them easy to get to. Please let me know if you have any questions.

W63-Tips for Managing Communications in Online Courses (1:30 – 2:30pm, Ballroom C)

Here are the links to the web pages with details for all of the topics we’ll discuss:

W84-The Secrets to Project-based Learning (2:45 – 3:45pm, Ballroom C)

Here is the link to web page with the details about PBL all in one place. I plan to be adding some more pieces here, too, so let me know if you think something is missing.

Secrets to Project-based Learning

Aug 24

Graduate Teaching Assistant Workshop

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Well, I took a large part of the summer off to spend with my family. Yesterday was my first day back at work, and today, I have the awesome opportunity to speak to a hundred or so graduate teaching assistants from across the University of Memphis. I was a TA at both Clemson University and at The University of Georgia. So I have a great respect for these folks and the important work you do.

Dr. Karen Weddle-West, Vice Provost for Graduate Studies, asked me to share tips on creating effective courses both on ground/on site and online. I’m really super excited to do so. I’ve put together quite a few tips that I use both in my face to face courses and online courses. I have created a page on my professional development wiki at http://viralnotebook.pbworks.com/Graduate-Teaching-Assistantship-Works hop .

I’ve organized the tips into four categories

Setting student expectations
Tips for managing a course
What value am I adding?
For whom and what purpose is your Powerpoint?

On the wiki page above, you can find all the notes and tips I discussed today, as well as the embedded presentation and the link to download the slides.

Jun 24

More fun and learning with Wichita State

What fun I had yesterday with the folks from Wichita State. We had a great discussion about organizing a course for online delivery, and I had some really interesting questions about experiences with thinner syllabi, video conferencing, and approaching new faculty. I’m a little concerned that I may have scared some folks, so I want to make sure during today’s conference that everyone is okay after they’ve had some time to digest and reflect. We’re definitely going to take some time to consider the topic from yesterday.

Today, we’re going to be tackling managing communications online. It can be a real bear sometimes when you teach online. It can seem like you’re always “on.” So, how do you create reasonable expectations with your students and not not seem unresponsive or distant? That just one of the topics we’re going to explore. I have some ideas about how to manage communications to make them more managable for the teacher when you’re teaching online.

I’m also going to share some tips I have for conducting chat sessions, discussion boards, and two-way audio and video. A couple of years ago, I conducted some research with a former student Dr. Jongpil Cheon (at Texas Tech University now) about two-way audio and video. So, it’s interesting to see what works and what students value. I’ll be incorporating some of these finding, as well as some “ah-hah” moments into the presentation.

The wiki pages we’ll be referring to today are:

If we have extra time, then we might can get to some tools that I recommend using:

Tools I recommend

And here’s the presentation I’ll be referring to as well.

Jun 23

Video conferencing with Wichita State

Today, I have the pleasure of spending some time with adventurous faculty at Witchita State University. So, a “BIG Hello!” goes out to Amy, Darren, and Rick, along with all of the other guests who will be joining us. I’m excited because I get to spend two days with these faculty who are considering a transformation for their respective courses with a move to online teaching and learning. We will be video conferencing using a dedicated/stationary Polycom system, which includes screen sharing.

Today, we’ll be discussing effective online course design. So, I’ll be sharing some of my ideas about planning an online course and designing the parts of the course so they are most beneficial to the students and are more easily facilitated.

We will be referring to a number of pages from my professional development resource wiki in place of handouts. I’m also going to embed the overview presentation below, so that you will have access to all the materials in one place. (By the way, you can also use the link at the top of the page to go to my wiki and all the pages are linked there as well.)

Here’s a copy of the presentation, too.

Feb 20

Effective online courses workshop

Discussion (icon for workshops) Today, I’m presenting a workshop with Drs. Lee Allen and Kay Reeves on creating effective online courses. There’s a tremendous push currently in our college (and university) to move more coursework online. So, beyond the technical aspects of using our course management system (Desire2Learn), we are also discussing pedagogy and course design for online teaching and learning. We’re looking forward to a great discussion and some important conversations about facilitating learning online.