Category Archives: Online Course Facilitation

Classroom of engaged college students using laptops, with bold text overlay reading "Increase Students' Engagement Through Feedback."

Increase Students’ Engagement Through Feedback

As instructors, we know the importance of feedback and checking for students’ understanding of course material. However, we often rely on traditional methods of assessment, like essays and exams. These methods are effective but don’t always allow for timely and constructive feedback. Giving feedback to students in real time helps them identify areas for improvement, deepen their understanding of course material, and develop essential critical thinking skills. Below I’ve shared some strategies to solidify your students’ knowledge prior to a high-stakes assessment. Continue reading →

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An OLA’s Guide to Class Engagement Over Zoom

Foreword

Today’s blog post is brought to you by representatives from our team of Online Learning Ambassadors (OLAs). In 2020, like countless other institutions, DePaul University moved classes online in response to the growing COVID-19 pandemic. To help instructors unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the transition to Zoom, the Center for Teaching and Learning created a new team of student employees designed to help support students and instructors. Although we’ve returned to campus now, some of the new online modalities remain, so the need and appreciation for the OLAs remains as well.
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Turning Deadlines From Enemies to Energizers
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Turning Deadlines From Enemies Into Energizers

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education piece, James M. Lang and Kristi Rudenga discuss combining intrinsic motivation strategies with extrinsic motivators that have come under scrutiny, like deadlines, grades, and punitive course policies. 

These recommendations speak to the moment many educators find themselves in: We’re no longer in the acute phase of the pandemic, where instructors and students are doing the best they can amidst historically challenging circumstances that necessitated changes to many educational norms. Now, we’re grappling with a gray area that’s just as challenging, as we try to decide which educational norms need to be reinstated and which “pandemic lessons” should be integrated into our practice moving forward.

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A Meditation on AI and the Faculty Member

Once in a while, something new appears that monumentally changes the way we as a society do things. It is met with a mixture of fascination and panic, as some wholeheartedly embrace it, while others see the end times coming. 

For many years, we have seen warnings about artificial intelligence: what could happen if it went wrong somehow? What if the machines started to replace us or took control? What about our jobs, our careers, our lives? 

That question is being answered, as of last November. Sometimes AI is used for good and sometimes not. But there is no question—it’s here to stay. Continue reading →

Revamping Office Hours

I have a hard time getting students to come to my office hours. When I do have one-on-one conversations with students outside of class, they almost always feel like a breakthrough of some sort, especially when meeting with my online students that I rarely chat with synchronously. As I start to wrap up this quarter at DePaul and make my inevitable list of all the things I want to do differently next quarter, I’m looking for ways to see more students during my office hours. 

I’m not the only one trying to figure this out. Derek Bruff and Beckie Supiano reference the same study led by Jeremy L. Hsu at Chapman University. In Spring 2021, Hsu and his team surveyed 500+ STEM students and 28 instructors to figure out what they think about office hours. Students and instructors both identified “Ask questions or review material, including going more in depth into related concepts” as the top reason to use office hours. 

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Educational Technology Before and During the Pandemic

Educational Technology Before and During the Pandemic

Before becoming an instructional designer in 2015, I was a teacher in the K-12 industry for 14 years. I specialized in teaching 3rd and 4th-grade self-contained classes, as well as the middle school classes in the areas of language arts and social studies. Since 2001 until now, teaching practices have changed due to pedagogy and the integration of technology. Kamau Bobb of Google‘s dedication to educational research advances the field. We live in an ever-changing technological society that impacts our lives at home and in our careers. With this being said, many teachers want to keep abreast of the latest pedagogical practices and technology developments, but it can be challenging due to time constraints.

As I compare and contrast the instruction I received in my undergraduate years in the College of Education at ISU vs the instruction I now give to undergraduate students in the College of Education at DePaul, a lot of the foundation is the same, but now there is a wide focus on how to integrate technology properly into the curriculum. Continue reading →

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Post Once, Reply Twice… But Why?

At some point–even prior to the start of COVID-19–most online instructors have relied on the ‘Post Once, Reply Twice’ formula for their online discussions. It is unclear where this formula originated, but like the Pot Roast Principle, there is no real reason we need to be bound by it. Discussions remain a pain point for most online instructors, so what can be done? How do we make our online discussions something students want to engage in? What alternatives exist?
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Videoconferencing Alternatives: How Low-Bandwidth Teaching Will Save Us All

When we try to replicate classroom experiences in an online environment, it’s easy to think of video conferencing as our go-to tool for all sorts of learning objectives—and for good reason. Most of us have participated in a video conference at work or had a video chat with friends or family at some point. We like the idea of being able to see and hear our students while interacting with them in real time just like we do when teaching face to face. But there are two key factors that make this approach problematic. 

1. Bandwidth

High-bandwidth technologies work great for students who have newer computers, fast and reliable internet access at home, and unlimited data plans on their phones. For other students, courses that require frequent use of high-bandwidth technologies can limit their ability to fully participate in course activities. This can jeopardize their success in the course, create a sense of shame and anxiety, and leave them feeling like second-class citizens.   

2. Immediacy

The second factor, immediacy, refers to how quickly we expect our students to respond when interacting with us and with each other. Typically, we think of immediacy as a good thing. It’s baked into face-to-face learning, so it doesn’t feel like a limited resource. But one of the biggest advantages of online learning is that it can provide you and your students with more flexibility. When we require our students to be online at exactly the same time, we sacrifice one of the key benefits of online learning, and that can make an online course feel like more of a burden than it has to be.  Continue reading →

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Considering New Options for Responding to Student Writing

In her recent Computers and Composition article on teaching writing using Learning Management Systems (LMSs), Allison Hutchison unpacked the “wicked problem” faculty face when using an institutionally-required system. Hutchison’s literature review outlines how faculty in the field of rhetoric and composition have critiqued the technologies that mediate writing instruction; indeed, this type of scholarship has become increasingly prevalent, as digital platforms for composing seem to be ever increasing (and thus ever more frequently appearing in our classrooms).

I’ve attempted to apply Hutchison’s framework for identifying the problem, the needs, and the potential solutions (albeit in a much simpler format) to a particular strand of practice in the writing classroom: providing feedback on assignments. DePaul recently adopted two technologies that can be used for this purpose, and both contain affordances and limitations that instructors should consider when adopting. The descriptions below are perhaps more utilitarian and less of a critique, but given that this is a blog post, and not an academic article, that framing seemed more…well, useful.  Continue reading →