Best Practices In Online Teaching And Learning Across Academic Disciplines

Online teaching and learning has surged in recent years, and faculty who normally teach in face-to-face settings are increasingly called upon to teach blended, hybrid, and fully online courses. Best Practices in Online Teaching and Learning across Academic Disciplines provides insights from experienced university teachers and scholars across multiple disciplines—including social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, mathematics, and professional programs such as nursing, education, and business administration—who share innovative practices, pedagogies, and instructional design techniques. This work highlights and features effective, practical, innovative, and engaging best-practices and approaches in online teaching and instructional design that can assist university faculty members and teachers, course designers and developers, and administrators invested and involved in online education. Using a common theme and structure, each chapter is co-authored by faculty members possessing a wealth of experience and credentialing in online teaching and instructional design in the relevant discipline or sub-discipline. Chapters include best-practices, approaches, and techniques within the discipline as well as relevant, innovative, and specific tools and strategies that improve student engagement and outcomes. The book will appeal to faculty members and administrators in higher education teaching or designing online courses or entire online curricula, as well as instructional design staff working with and training faculty. Readers will be especially interested to discover lessons about how contributors have successfully taught and designed courses in disciplines not typically associated with online learning, such as mathematics, composition/writing, drawing, "hard" sciences, and speech, among others. Distributed for George Mason University Press

Best Practices in Online Program Development is a practical, hands-on guide that provides the concrete strategies that academic and administrative departments within institutions of higher learning need to develop in order to create and maintain coherent and effective online educational programs. Unlike individual courses, an online education program requires a comprehensive, inter-departmental effort to be integrated into the ongoing educational project of a college or university. This book focuses on the: Integration of online education into the institutional mission Complex faculty-related issues including recruiting, training, and teaching Multifaceted support required for student retention and success Need for multilayered assessment at the course, program, technical, and institutional levels Challenges posed to governance and by the need to garner resources across the institution Model to insure ongoing, comprehensive development of online educational programs Best Practices in Online Program Development covers the above topics and more, giving all the stakeholders in online educational programs the building blocks to foster successful programs while encouraging them to determine what role online education should play in their academic offerings.

Create a more effective system for evaluating online faculty Evaluating Online Teaching is the first comprehensive book to outline strategies for effectively measuring the quality of online teaching, providing the tools and guidance that faculty members and administrators need. The authors address challenges that colleges and universities face in creating effective online teacher evaluations, including organizational structure, institutional governance, faculty and administrator attitudes, and possible budget constraints. Through the integration of case studies and theory, the text provides practical solutions geared to address challenges and foster effective, efficient evaluations of online teaching. Readers gain access to rubrics, forms, and worksheets that they can customize to fit the needs of their unique institutions. Evaluation methods designed for face-to-face classrooms, from student surveys to administrative observations, are often applied to the online teaching environment, leaving reviewers and instructors with an ill-fitted and incomplete analysis. Evaluating Online Teaching shows how strategies for evaluating online teaching differ from those used in traditional classrooms and vary as a function of the nature, purpose, and focus of the evaluation. This book guides faculty members and administrators in crafting an evaluation process specifically suited to online teaching and learning, for more accurate feedback and better results. Readers will: Learn how to evaluate online teaching performance Examine best practices for student ratings of online teaching Discover methods and tools for gathering informal feedback Understand the online teaching evaluation life cycle The book concludes with an examination of strategies for fostering change across campus, as well as structures for creating a climate of assessment that includes online teaching as a component. Evaluating Online Teaching helps institutions rethink the evaluation process for online teaching, with the end goal of improving teaching and learning, student success, and institutional results.

"Neither an academic tome nor a prescriptive 'how to' guide, The Theory and Practice of Online Learning is an illuminating collection of essays by practitioners and scholars active in the complex field of distance education. Distance education has evolved significantly in its 150 years of existence. For most of this time, it was an individual pursuit defined by infrequent postal communication. But recently, three more developmental generations have emerged, supported by television and radio, teleconferencing, and computer conferencing. The early 21st century has produced a fifth generation, based on autonomous agents and intelligent, database-assisted learning, that has been referred to as Web 2.0. The second edition of "The Theory and Practice of Online Learning" features updates in each chapter, plus four new chapters on current distance education issues such as connectivism and social software innovations."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume offers the first comprehensive guide to how high-impact practices (HIPs) are being implemented in online environments and how they can be adjusted to meet the needs of online learners. This multi-disciplinary approach will assist faculty and administrators to effectively implement HIPs in distance education courses and online programs.With a chapter devoted to each of the eleven HIPs, this collection offers guidance that takes into account the differences between e-learners and traditional on-campus students.A primary goal of High-Impact Practices Online is to share the ways in which HIPs may need to be amended to meet the needs of online learners. Through specific examples and practical suggestions in each chapter, readers are introduced to concrete strategies for transitioning HIPs to the online environment that can be utilized across a range of disciplines and institution types. Each chapter of High-Impact Practices Online also references the most recent and relevant literature on each HIP so that readers are brought up to date on what makes online HIPs successful.The book provides guidance on how best to implement HIPs to increase retention and completion for online learners.

Best Practices for Flipping the College Classroom provides a comprehensive overview and systematic assessment of the flipped classroom methodology in higher education. The book: Reviews various pedagogical theories that inform flipped classroom practice and provides a brief history from its inception in K–12 to its implementation in higher education. Offers well-developed and instructive case studies chronicling the implementation of flipped strategies across a broad spectrum of academic disciplines, physical environments, and student populations. Provides insights and suggestions to instructors in higher education for the implementation of flipped strategies in their own courses by offering reflections on learning outcomes and student success in flipped classrooms compared with those employing more traditional models and by describing relevant technologies. Discusses observations and analyses of student perceptions of flipping the classroom as well as student practices and behaviors particular to flipped classroom models. Illuminates several research models and approaches for use and modification by teacher-scholars interested in building on this research on their own campuses. The evidence presented on the flipped classroom methodology by its supporters and detractors at all levels has thus far been almost entirely anecdotal or otherwise unreliable. Best Practices for Flipping the College Classroom is the first book to provide faculty members nuanced qualitative and quantitative evidence that both supports and challenges the value of flipping the college classroom.

This book provides successful, evidence-based approaches and practices for quality assurance related to various aspects of online programs that can be adopted or adapted by faculty, leaders, and institutions looking to create, improve, and evaluate online programs in higher education.

Online learning has become an increasing presence in higher education course design, with most courses combining physical real time engagement with asynchronous learning activity. Now, however, there is a greater need for this one-stop guide to critical practice in this area, as we rethink the role of digital in the social practices of university learning and teaching. This book provides a critical and contemporary ‘deep dive’ into the socio-material, technological and pedagogical practices at work in virtual and digital higher education. Examples are drawn from across and between disciplinary pedagogies with a focus on blended and hybrid approaches and the pivot to fully online made urgent by Covid-19 but drawing on existing best practice. The Critical Practice in Higher Education series provides a scholarly and practical entry point for academics into key areas of higher education practice. Each book in the series explores an individual topic in depth, providing an overview in relation to current thinking and practice, informed by recent research. The series will be of interest to those engaged in the study of higher education, those involved in leading learning and teaching or working in academic development, and individuals seeking to explore particular topics of professional interest. Through critical engagement, this series aims to promote an expanded notion of being an academic – connecting research, teaching, scholarship, community engagement and leadership – while developing confidence and authority.