Promising Teaching Strategies
"Good Practices" for Online Education
Chickering and Gamson’s “Seven Principles for Good Practices in Undergraduate Education” have helped shape classroom pedagogies and improve student learning for the past three decades. With the rise in online education offerings, how might we transfer these valuable “good practices” to a virtual learning environment? How can instructors facilitate cooperation among students who never meet each other; what types of activities facilitate active learning in online education? In this activity we will consider several methods for converting “good practices” pedagogies to an online learning environment.
Karen Hornsby - North Carolina A&T State University
Wade Maki - University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Peer-to-Peer Learning Through Linked Courses
Tracy Nichols describes a unique application of peer-to-peer learning across two similar courses, one taught at the undergraduate level and one taught at the graduate level. Benefits to graduate students included providing them with a leadership experience and reinforcing critical skills. Benefits to undergraduate students included receiving additional writing practice and feedback and being exposed to graduate education and graduate students. Since both courses covered introductory material to the field of public health education, both groups of students were given a chance to explore the field and discover career opportunities.
Tracy Nichols - University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Formative Assessment for Online Courses
Formative assessment is a classroom tool designed to provide students with feedback about their learning prior to conducting any graded evaluations. The purpose of formative assessment is to improve student learning and allow students to practice self-assessment and thus these types of activities are almost always ungraded. What methods might be used to integrate formative assessment activities into a virtual learning environment? This activity will offer several free resources for creating interactive, engaging formative assessment exercises for your online courses.
Karen Hornsby - North Carolina A&T State University
Using Learning Objects in Online Courses
Learning objects are interactive digital tools designed to enhance a student’s learning of specific concepts in short chunks of time. Pedagogically focused this definition stresses the student-centered learning attributes of learning objects rather than its technological design. Many tools can be utilized to create these exercises including video clips, mazes, and other readily available software applications. How might an instructor create engaging exercises that capture authentic problem-based scenarios? This workshop compares a traditional discussion exercise assignment to an exercise integrating a learning object discussion prompt. (See "Creating Quandary Exercises for the Virtual Learning Environment" for instructions on building an interactive Learning Object like the one featured in this Brief Hybrid Workshop.)
Karen Hornsby - North Carolina A&T State University
Wade Maki - University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Creating Quandary Exercises for the Virtual Learning Environment
In an asynchronous learning environment, how can students participate in meaningful, active learning critical thinking exercises? This brief hybrid workshop will explain how to utilize Quandary software to create interactive, low budget, portable learning objects. Quandary software is an application for creating digital decision-tree action mazes where the user is presented with a situation and various decision choices as to an appropriate course of action. Working through the branching decision-tree is like negotiating a mazebecause choosing a particular option leads to additional content presentations and more decisions. The Quandary application has features to track students’ decisions and set decision triggered conditional events thus allowing the construction of dynamic, creative learning objects. Quandary is a valuable software tool as it is easy to use, full featured, and very affordable. The short eClip explains the basics of building in Quandary. Further helpful resources are provided including a longer eClip focused on more advanced Quandary features and examples of some completed Quandary exercises.
Wade Maki - University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Beyond the Mirror
Assistant Professor Duane Cyrus leads the viewer through examples of implementing video/audio feedback and notes to demonstrate the pedagogical benefits to students. Video/audio technology isimplemented as a regular part of the learning environment. Examples of this model are applicable for hybrid, distance, as well as classroom courses.
Duane Cyrus - University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Website design - Benjamin Wyatt