Blog Post 3.6

What are the most important lessons you gathered from the course? I learned to look at teaching from an academic point of view. I also learned that in an online setting, greater care must be taken to encourage interactions with students and to create a community.   How has your thinking changed as a result […]

Blog Post 3.5

Did you engage in each of the phases of the critical inquiry process? Yes I engaged in all of the phases of the critical inquiry process. When I went back to categorize my posts, I saw that they covered all four phases of the process (Triggering Event, Exploration, Integration and Resolution).   Were you able […]

Blog Post 3.4 Interview

I interviewed an experienced English professor who has been teaching distance education courses for approximately 40 years. One of the questions that I asked was how he promotes community and connection in a continuous entry online course. He encourages his students to send him questions. He has also set up an online forum where students […]

Blog Post 3.3

Example Learning Activities   1: Learning Outcome: Explain time dilation. Learning Activity: In a small online group, design a “comic strip” using a series of diagrams of a flashlight and mirrors in a train car to show how time depends on velocity.   2: Learning Outcome: Reflect on the benefits and risks of nuclear power. […]

Blog Post 3.2

  How has your view of the effective practice changed now that you have read more about teaching presence?   I found it very interesting that there was such strong differences in practice between the two different courses that were used in the study conducted by Anderson et al. While the sample set is too […]

Blog Post 3.1

Hello, My name is Julia Stanley. I am teaching Physics 1011: Physics for Future Leaders. I have a PhD in Physics and specialized in Medical Physics. Here are some of my thoughts on an effective online practice that I experienced!   When I was an undergraduate, we had online lab tutorials for chemistry. We would […]

Debate Topics

One of the assignments in my course is to choose a side of a debate on a physics issue and write a letter from a given perspective. This activity could be modified such that two students would write letters (and rebuttal letters) to each other from opposing perspectives. This modification would allow for more student-student […]

Peer Review

I think it would increase the sense of community within my course if I set up a forum where students could peer review each others journal article submissions. Currently, the students do not interact with each other and I think this lowers their involvement with the course. Other courses in other subjects have peer review […]

Blog Post 2.5

What are the 2-3 most important concepts that have impacted your thoughts on student engagement and retention during this course?   One important concept that impacted my thoughts on student engagement was social presence. In an online setting it is intrinsically more difficult to create a trusting community. I was very lucky to have completed […]