Online Distance Learning Tips

If you are new to the online teaching experience, there are excellent teaching tips available on the Internet. The Chronicle of Higher Education has an online distance learning forum (http://www.chronicle.com) which allows online instructors to share ideas or instructors could just conduct an Internet search on 'online teaching tips.' While every online instructor may have their favorite development techniques, here are some tips I give to faculty new to the online teaching experience.

When you develop your curriculum and instructional site:

• Make sure your course site is easy to navigate! Have a colleague or friend go into your site as a student to browse and access your syllabus and assignments. If they have questions, so will your students! According to the experts, student should be able to get where they need to go on the course site within three mouse clicks.
• Keep communication lines open with each student in your class--this means tons of e-mail messages, postings, and replies. Use all types of communication to keep in touch, including snail mail (postcards), and phone calls. It will pay large dividends when students conduct their evaluations of your course at the end of the semester!
  
• Most course management systems allow you to incorporate an anonymous student feedback survey on your course site. Do it and then remind your students to give you their feedback each week! This will allow you to redesign your course during the semester to better teach and reach all your students. This is extremely helpful when your department chair needs to know if you are reaching your course's SLOs (student learning outcomes).

Do you have some favorite online teaching suggestions to add to our collection? Send us your suggestions here!

mej:)