Best+Practices

Here is a free book about Best Practices in Online Learning

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I have been reading: //The Online Teaching Survival Guide:// //Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips// by Judith Boettcher and Rita-Marie Conrad

This book provides (among other things) a set of ten best practices selected from teaching and learning research studies and best practices that have been developed over the past twenty years of online teaching and learning. I’ll summarize them next.

**Best Practice 1**__:__ __Be present at the course site__ The best online faculty, according to students, are faculty who are present multiple times a week, and at best daily. One way to create a sense of presence without it consuming too much time is to focus discussions in the course site and avoid on-to-one emails. Time-released announcements that remind learners of assignment due dates and prepared audio containing additional content that can be swiftly uploaded midweek are other ways to let the learners know you are there. **Best Practice 2:** __Create a supportive Online Course Community__ Nurturing a learning community as part of an online course is almost as important as being a significant presence. A good strategy for developing a supportive online course community is to design a course with balanced set of dialogues. This means designing a course so that the three dialogues of faculty to learner, learner to learner, and learner to resource are about equal. Encouraging the learner to learner dialogue can be done with one or more of these strategies: · Lunch the class with a personal introduction posting so that students get to know one another and you get to know the students. · Encourage the use of a general open student forum for students to post and request help and assistance form each other through discussions and help areas. · Divide a larger class into small groups of four to six, similar to a study group, that students can depend on for supportive networking. **Best Practice 3:** __Develop a Set of Explicit Expectations for Your Learners and for Yourself as to How You Will Communicate and How Much Time Students Should Be Working on the Course Each Week__ **Best Practice 4:** __Use a Variety of Large Group, Small Group, and Individual Work Experiences__ Online courses can be more enjoyable and effective when students have the opportunity to brainstorm and work through concepts and assignments with one or two or more fellow students. Building options and opportunities for students to work together and individually is highly recommended. **Best Practice 5**:__Use-Synchronous and Asynchronous Activities__ Using course management systems, virtual live classrooms, spontaneous collaborations tools, and an almost infinite number of Web tools and smartphones that support synchronous chat, video messaging and more is it possible to do almost everything that we do in face-to-face classroom. **Best Practice 6:** __Ask for Informal Feedback Early in the Term__ Early feedback surveys are effective in getting students to provide feedback on what is working well in a course and solicit suggestions and ideas on what might help them have a better course experience. **Best Practice 7:** __Prepare Discussions Posts that Invite Responses, Questions, Discussions, and Reflections__ The communication tool that is the heart and soul of the online course community is the discussion board. Discussions in an online course are the equivalent of class discussions in a face-to-face class. Here are a few hints for discussion posting pulled from many conversations with experienced online faculty: · Create open-ended questions that learners can explore and apply the concepts that they are learning. · Ask clarifying questions that encourage students to think about what they know and don’t know. · Don’t post questions soliciting basic facts or questions for which there is an obvious yes-or-no response. **Best Practice 8:** __Search Out and Use Content Resources That Are Available in Digital Format If Possible__ This best practice includes encouraging students to make good use of Internet resources. **Best Practice 9:** __Combine Core Concept Learning with Customized and Personalized Learning__ Briefly, this principle means that faculty need to identify the core concepts to be learned in a course and then guide and mentor learners through a set of increasingly complex, personalized, and customized learning activities to help learners apply these core concepts and develop their own knowledge structures. **Best Practice 10:** __Plan a Good Closing and Wrap Activity for the Course__ As courses start coming to close and winding down, it is easy to focus on assessing and grading students and forget the value of a good closing experience. End-of-course experiences often include summaries and analyses. These end-of-course experiences are a good time to use live classrooms, YouTube, and other synchronous collaborations tools to remind students of core concepts and fundamental principles.