Increasing Productivity And Efficiency In Online Teaching

Distance learning has become very popular in recent years, making evident some of the problems inherent to online classes as they are today. High attrition rates, driven in part by student isolation and low satisfaction, have plagued online courses. For an online class to succeed, it must be built upon engaging media and meaningful interaction. Increasing Productivity and Efficiency in Online Teaching provides a reference for educators in virtual classrooms and enumerates strategies to foster instructor engagement and support. Because co-construction of information, opposed to rote memorization of disseminated facts, engages students and develops critical thinking skills, online education must shift to reflect this. Drawing from learning theory, this publication focuses on the ways educators can shape their online classes to best suit their students and leave them with knowledge and course satisfaction. This book is recommended for researchers, developers, students of education, administrators, and online educators in all subject areas.

In order to be successful, online learning should be planned systematically. It can be said that offering distance education courses without preparation and knowledge about the theoretical background can cause drawbacks. While distance education has become widespread and popular, it is observed that there could be problems in its application. Such problems can include technical problems, inability to meet the learning needs at the learners’ own speeds, lack of communication among learners and between learners and teachers, and lack of quality materials appropriate for online learning or the inclusion of materials used in traditional methods directly into online learning. For successful online courses, these critical aspects of distance education are important, and they should be taken into account by the institutions and the instructors offering online courses. The Handbook of Research on Managing and Designing Online Courses in Synchronous and Asynchronous Environments provides up-to-date knowledge and experiences regarding technologies, processes, and environments for online course design in distance education systems and covers topics related to the aspects of successful distance education systems with a focus on teaching and learning in online environments. Focusing on topics such as instructional design and integrated systems, it is an ideal guide for online course designers, instructional designers, curricula developers, administrators, educators, researchers, trainers, and students.

This practical guide is one of the first in the field to examine research-based teaching and learning strategies, promote positive and inclusive learning environments, and provide interactive features that allow readers to demonstrate and apply what they learn. Ideal for courses on teaching and pedagogy, and written for both counselor educators and their students, it provides a deep understanding of how learning works in order to improve teaching practices and create strong student learning outcomes. Skill-building chapters explore how to use dynamic lecturing, integrate collaborative team-based principles into teaching, enrich strategies for online learning, develop transparent assessment activities, document teaching effectiveness, practice effective gatekeeping, and engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Text features include content alignment with the CACREP Standards for teaching, a sample learner-centered syllabus, “pause and learns,” reflective activities, and application exercises. Javier Cavazos Vela, PhD, is associate dean for research and graduate programs at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. *Requests for digital versions from ACA can be found on www.wiley.com. *To request print copies, please visit the ACA website here *Reproduction requests for material from books published by ACA should be directed to permissions@counseling.org

Effective online teaching is a well-documented topic, however, this book is different because it specifically addresses the effective and affective pedagogy and learning. It provides methods for building a strong and meaningful online environment that builds community, relationships, and establishes the social presence of each individual learner. This book provides a different perspective as it is written by experienced faculty members in higher education, all of whom have been teaching online for a decade or more. It also addresses the how and why establishing social presence as a necessity for effective online learning. This book addresses the “Why?” in the need for understanding contemporary approaches for exemplar online teaching with the establishment of social presence. With an increase in online learning, there is a shift in how current teaching practices are impacted and what is important to student learning in this change. This book describes the importance of strong andragogical practices in online teaching: rigor, teacher and learner mindset, and the importance of constructing social presence. Effective Learning Environments in Higher Education Online Settings: Establishing Social Presence provides pedagogical tools for enhancing the online learning experience. A relevant guide for constructing and teaching virtual / distance / elearning / online / hybrid / blended courses, faculty, instructional designers, professional development leaders, and administrators will find this book a practical and valuable resource for building community and establishing social presence in authentic ways.

The rapid growth in online and virtual learning opportunities has created culturally diverse classes and corporate training sessions. Instruction for these learning opportunities must adjust to meet participant needs. Online Course Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a comprehensive reference source for the latest scholarly material on the trends, techniques, and management of online and distance-learning environments and examines the benefits and challenges of these developments. Highlighting a range of pertinent topics, such as blended learning, social presence, and educational online games, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for administrators, developers, instructors, staff, technical support, and students actively involved in teaching in online learning environments.

Choosing the right technologies to match student learning outcomes in today's technology-integrated classrooms presents educators and instructional designers with multiple curricula and instructional design challenges including selecting appropriate technologies to match desired student learning outcomes. As students continue to have broad access to information from a variety of web-based platforms, educators and educational professionals are increasingly tasked with ensuring the information used to complete key assignments or tasks is authentic and from a verifiable resource. As such, the era of deep fakes in images, audios, videos, and digital texts is more prevalent than ever as numerous programs using artificial intelligence (AI) can significantly alter original content to fundamentally change the intent of original content. Moreover, students are being bombarded by a plethora of information that is either intentionally or mistakenly false and must be navigated with care. Accordingly, educators and educational professionals are now tasked with employing best practices to not only teach basic digital literacy and citizenship skills but also to recognize how technology-immersed learning environments interact with deep fakes and misinformation while equipping students with the tools necessary to recognize authentic and altered content. Deep Fakes, Fake News, and Misinformation in Online Teaching and Learning Technologies is a critical reference source that addresses rising concerns of students’ ability to navigate the multitude of false and altered information and content that is easily accessible through online platforms. The chapters go into deeper detail about how deep fakes, fake news, and mis- and dis-information have the potential of negatively affecting the fields of teaching and learning and the importance of student access to content-related tasks from legitimate, vetted resources that accurately reflect the desired information the student means to convey. The book seeks to reinforce the importance of digital literacy and digital citizenship among adolescents. This book is essential for teaching faculty, higher education faculty, higher education administrators, educational software developers, security specialists, information specialists, media specialists, librarians, educational researchers, and students looking for information on how deep fakes and fake news are being navigated within the context of online teaching and educational technologies.

Colleges and universities throughout the United States are reimagining teaching and learning processes to best match the personalized needs of the 21st century learner in the present digital age. Applying various digital education strategies within undergraduate and graduate settings and identifying the metrics that can be used to effectively determine learning outcomes are all critical to ensuring a productive educational experience. Cases on Digital Learning and Teaching Transformations in Higher Education is an important resource to the field of education, especially within the TPACK construct, as it provides a glimpse into an initiative specifically designed to transform how university faculty design their courses for maximum and directed technology-relevant impact. Featuring an array of topics such as course transformation, digital retooling, technology trial and error, student engagement, and pedagogy, this book is ideal for university faculty, university administration, curriculum designers, instructional technology designers, academicians, and researchers.

While research into intercultural teaching has grown exponentially during the past two decades, the research has primarily resorted to the use of quantitative data collection instruments and the interpretation of scores calculated through them. As such, studies in the field can seem somewhat decontextualized, ignoring in some cases setting-specific parameters. Therefore, further study is needed to bring together theory, research, and practice demonstrating how this teaching is reflected in research design and how it is undertaken in different settings. Intercultural Foreign Language Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Contexts is an essential reference source that provides a series of rich insights into the way intercultural education is practiced in numerous international contexts and showcases practical examples of teaching situations and classroom activities that demonstrate its impact within the classroom. Featuring research on topics such as higher education, multilingualism, and professionalism, this book is ideally designed for educators, researchers, administrators, professionals, academicians, and students seeking pedagogical guidance on intercultural teaching.