Provide them structure/guidance on what the feedback should be like and then have them submit their feedback to both the student and to you. The key to conducting this type of activity is providing supports to help students accomplish this task at a distance. I have been asked several times about ideas for injecting student-to-student interaction into distance courses when the enrolment numbers are likely to be low. Some instructors feel that with low enrollment numbers that it might be better to design an assessment scheme that contains only individual work. Peer feedback. MORE >>

So the permutations provided by combining the three points above together contribute to why a good comprehensive book on the subject is difficult to find. The goal of the PLN is to provide you with a support system of like-minded people asking like-minded questions and together you can act as a large professional development resource for each other. I received a great question over the weekend asking if I could “ help finding a good book about technology in post secondary education ” and I had to take a couple of days to think about it. Do you just give up? Check out the paper.li MORE >>

Over time I have learned that the best way to engage students is to provide them two things: 1) a balanced yet consistent level of predictability and variability in the coursework, 2) a balanced level of student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction. I received an email last week from a college professor who had a good question. She is designing her second online course and was wondering what my opinion was on the types of assignments that work best online. Yes – I vote for predictability and variety; however, there is more than one way to skin the cat. Final Exam: Week 14. MORE >>

In the case where a large number HTML pages are unavoidable, can professors please try to provide a print-friendly PDF version as well? We are changing Learning Management Systems (LMS) at my school. Lately I have been very busy transferring content from one LMS to another and prettying up courses. You must envy me right? smile*). Anyway, I am working on distance courses where the instructor and the students never meet face to face. So the primary method of communication of the course materials is via the course website on the LMS. ve seen some crazy things in my course conversion tasks. MORE >>

This semester I am teaching a second year chemistry course via distance and I have some students in the class that have asked me if I could provide links to some useful videos on specific topics. With the field of Distance Education exploding due to the maturation of the Internet, it’s no wonder more good quality free academic content is finding its way on the web. Here’s a great example that I just learned about from Dr. James Harris at the University of Leeds in England. To date, they have produced over 360 videos with a promise of more to follow. MORE >>