Day Eleven: Best Practices and New Opportunities

Almost everyone recognizes the names Chickering and Gamson in relation to their Seven Principles of Good Practice (1987). Well, in the online environment, Arthur Chickering and Steven Ehrmann, of the Teaching and Learning With Technology Group, transposed these principles to the online environment. This does indeed make for effective teaching online.

Cincinnati State Distance Learning compiled a list of 10 top best practices from the following resources:

Resources

J. V. Boettcher, Ph.D., Ten Best Practices for Teaching Online, http://www.designingforlearning.info/services/writing/ecoach/tenbest.html

University of Maryland University College, Best Practices for Online Teaching, http://www.umuc.edu/ctl/upload/bestpractices.pdf

The Hanover Research Council, Best Practices in Online Teaching Strategies, http://www.hanoverresearch.com/library/assets/libPdfs/Best%20Practices%20in%20Online%20Teaching%20Strategies%20-%20Membership.pdf

Robbins, Renee 5 Easy Tips for Teaching Online Courses, http://learningputty.com/2010/01/18/5-easy-tips-for-teaching-online-courses/

Dr. Lawrence Ragan of Penn State's World Campus outlines the following 10 best practices:

Show Up and Teach
Practice Proactive Course Management Strategies
Establish Patterns of Course Activities
Plan for the Unplanned
Response Requested and Expected
Think Before You Write
Help Maintain Forward Progress
Safe and Secure
Quality Counts
(Double) Click a Mile on My Connection

Ragan, L.10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education. Faculty Focus Report.

Building Online Community:

A very important part of any online class is buildng online community. In "Key Elements of Building Online Community: Comparing Faculty and Student Perceptions", the authors, Vesely, Bloom and Sherlock, examine the importance of creating that learning community that is essential to successful learning. All study participants agreed that the key elements of a learning community were: "a sense of shared purpose, purposeful communication involving encouragement and support, collaborating to learn course material, working for an extended period of time on a common goal, and a comfortable exchange of ideas in an organized fashion".

New Opportunities Arising from Teaching Online

Of course, the most obvious opportunity is that you can teach more courses without having to travel to various locations to teach them. However, there are many more. Listen to what this Language Professor, Barbara Sawhill, has to say about what MOOCs and the opportunities that they present:

In the National Educational Technology Plan (2010), the potential for teachers to learn from new technologies is greatly enhanced because of the connected teaching model (p.8). Teachers become connected to other teachers and resources from which they can learn to be more effective in their teaching. The online learning community breaks them out of the isolation of their classroom.

In a 2010 inTASC report, teachers highly profited from online professional development.

If you bought Ko and Rossen's Teaching Online: A Practical Guide, read Chapter 14, "Taking Advantage of New Opportunities." It contains an excellent illustration of a specific teacher's experience in teaching online for the first time. At the same time, it describes the new opportunities she found there. One of the new opportunities that many online faculty find is that it makes them a better teacher f2f!

Post in the discussion Forum for Day Eleven: New Opportunities and Best Practices

Walk right over to Day Twelve: Utilizing Groups