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99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos
The research is clear: online learning works best when faculty build regular, positive, and interactive relationships with students. A strategy that helps forge such a relationship is the use of videos. Student satisfaction and course engagement levels also increase with the use of instructor-generated videos -the subject of this book. Beginning by outlining the different types of videos you can create, and what the research says about their effectiveness, Karen Costa explains how they can be designed to reinforce learning, to align with and promote course outcomes, and to save you time across your courses. She then describes how to create successful videos with commonly available technologies such as your smartphone, and without a major investment of time, demonstrating the simple steps she took to develop her bank of videos and build her confidence to deliver short, straightforward learning aids that are effective and personal. Embedded QR codes in the text enable you to view sample videos and screencasts that bring the book's advice to life as you read. If you've been wanting to include videos in your teaching but haven't found the time or confidence, this book will help you to develop a simple and sustainable video development process, supporting both your success and the success of your students.
Best Practices in Engaging Online Learners Through Active and Experiential Learning Strategies
A practical guide for all instructors, instructional designers, and online learning administrators designing, developing, teaching, and leading online, hybrid and blended learning courses and programs, who seek to provide supportive, engaging, and interactive learner experiences. This book explores the integration of active and experiential learning approaches and activities including simulations, gamification, social media integration, project-based learning, scenario-based learning, virtual tours, and online micro-credentialing as they relate to the development of authentic skill-building, communication, problem-solving, and critical-thinking in learners. New and emerging learning technologies of virtual and augmented reality along with artificial intelligence are included in this updated edition with examples of how instructors can actively use them in online courses to engage learners in experiential experiences. Readers will find guidelines for the development of participatory and peer-learning, competency-based learning, field-based experiences, clinical experiences, and service-learning opportunities in the online classroom. In addition, the authors provide effective learning strategies, discipline-specific examples, templates, and additional resources that align learner engagement with assessment practices and course outcomes.
Increasing Student Engagement and Retention in e-Learning Environments
Increasing Student Engagement and Retention in e-Learning Environments: Web 2.0 and Blended Learning Technologies examines new research on how online and blended learning technologies are being used in higher education to increase learner engagement in an era of increasing technological convergence and dependence. These enabling technologies are reshaping and reframing the practice of teaching and learning in higher education. Through case studies, surveys, and literature reviews, this volume will examine how online and blended technologies are being used to improve academic literacies in students, to create engaging communities of practice, and how these technologies are being used to improve learner motivation and self-empowered learners. This volume will also discuss a framework for adopting and deploying these technologies.
Leading the eLearning Transformation of Higher Education
eLearning has entered the mainstream of higher education as an agent of strategic change. This transformation requires eLearning leaders to develop the skills to innovate successfully at a time of heightened competition and rapid technological change. In this environment eLearning leaders must act within their institutions as much more than technology managers and assume the prime role of helping their institutions understand the opportunities that eLearning presents for faculty, for students, and for client organizations in the community. They need to prepare to participate in policy development around these opportunities. They must understand the multiple dimensions of practice in the field—operations, administration, and working within the complex culture of a higher education institution—while also functioning as scholars of the field who can bring the best ideas from other institutions to help shape policy around eLearning.
Learning Online: The Student Experience
What's it really like to learn online? Learning Online: The Student Experience Online learning is ubiquitous for millions of students worldwide, yet our understanding of student experiences in online learning settings is limited. The geographic distance that separates faculty from students in an online environment is its signature feature, but it is also one that risks widening the gulf between teachers and learners. In Learning Online, George Veletsianos argues that in order to critique, understand, and improve online learning, we must examine it through the lens of student experience. Approaching the topic with stories that elicit empathy, compassion, and care, Veletsianos relays the diverse day-to-day experiences of online learners. Each in-depth chapter follows a single learner's experience while focusing on an important or noteworthy aspect of online learning, tackling everything from demographics, attrition, motivation, and loneliness to cheating, openness, flexibility, social media, and digital divides. Veletsianos also draws on these case studies to offer recommendations for the future and lessons learned. The elusive nature of online learners' experiences, the book reveals, is a problem because it prevents us from doing better: from designing more effective online courses, from making evidence-informed decisions about online education, and from coming to our work with the full sense of empathy that our students deserve. Writing in an evocative, accessible, and concise manner, Veletsianos concretely demonstrates why it is so important to pay closer attention to the stories of students--who may have instructive and insightful ideas about the future of education.
Microsoft Teams for Dummies
Discover the power of Microsoft Teams Millions of people access Microsoft Teams every day to assist with the collaboration it takes to get work done. That number continues to grow thanks to the countless communication tools for working with associates inside and outside your organization you can find in Microsoft Teams. If you're new to Microsoft Teams, start here. This book will give you must-have insight on chatting, file sharing, organizing teams, using video communication, and more. You'll also see just how you should be doing things, with best-practice recommendations and ideas for integrating Microsoft Teams into your existing workflows. Learn your way around Microsoft Teams and set up the interface Communicate via chat and video chat, inside and outside your org Integrate Teams with other Office apps for seamless collaboration Use Teams to optimize your meetings, build a knowledge wiki, and more! Microsoft's shared workspace can help you get collaborative and stay connected to the people and files you need, whether you're at your desk or on the go.
The Productive Online and Offline Professor
The Productive Online Professor assists those who teach online and blended courses with managing their personal productivity. Faculty are often expected to provide support and feedback to learners outside of normal work hours in non-traditional classes. Programs that are designed with more asynchronous content may cause faculty to perceive that it is difficult to ever press the “off button” on their teaching.The author offers guidance and suggests software tools for streamlining communication and productivity that enable faculty to better balance their lives while giving rich feedback to students.
Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education
Advocates for the rights of people with disabilities have worked hard to make universal design in the built environment "just part of what we do." We no longer see curb cuts, for instance, as accommodations for people with disabilities, but perceive their usefulness every time we ride our bikes or push our strollers through crosswalks. This is also a perfect model for Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework grounded in the neuroscience of why, what, and how people learn. Tobin and Behling show that, although it is often associated with students with disabilities, UDL can be profitably broadened toward a larger ease-of-use and general diversity framework. Captioned instructional videos, for example, benefit learners with hearing impairments but also the student who worries about waking her young children at night or those studying on a noisy team bus. Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone is aimed at faculty members, faculty-service staff, disability support providers, student-service staff, campus leaders, and graduate students who want to strengthen the engagement, interaction, and performance of all college students. It includes resources for readers who want to become UDL experts and advocates: real-world case studies, active-learning techniques, UDL coaching skills, micro- and macro-level UDL-adoption guidance, and use-them-now resources.
Redesigning Courses for Online Delivery: Design, Interaction, Media and Evaluation
This volume examines key considerations for effective online course redesign. Using a 4-phase approach, Redesigning Courses for Online Delivery informs thinking, inspires creativity, and structures decisions to drive the development of high quality online learning experiences. Both scholarly and practical, it provides a comprehensive approach to redesign useful to novices and veterans alike.
Thrive Online: A New Approach to Building Expertise and Confidence as an Online Educator
Research shows that online education, when designed and facilitated well, is as effective as traditional campus-based instruction. Despite the evidence, many faculty perceive online education as inferior to traditional instruction--and are often quite vocal in their skepticism. Simultaneously, however, more and more students are seeking online courses and degree programs. Thrive Online: A New Approach to Building Expertise and Confidence as an Online Educator is an invitation for the rising tide of online educators who are relatively new to teaching online, and also for those more experienced instructors who are increasingly frustrated by the dominant bias against online education. Readers will find: * An approach that empowers online educators to thrive professionally using a set of specific agentic behaviors * Strategies for approaching conversations about online learning in new ways that inform the skeptics and critics * Strategies that celebrate the additional skills and proficiencies developed by successful online educators * Guidance for educators who want to feel natural and fluent in the online learning environment * Guidance for enhancing the user-centered nature of online spaces to create student-centered learning environments * Encouragement for online educators to pursue leadership opportunities The internet is changing how people communicate and learn. Thrive Online: A New Approach to Building Expertise and Confidence as an Online Educator offers guidance, inspiration and strategies required to adapt and lead higher education through this change. This book is for higher education instructors who are seeking community, a sense of belonging, and the professional respect they deserve. Thriving is not a reaction to our environment, but rather a state of being we can create intentionally for ourselves. The time has come to change the conversation about online education. Add your voice - join the community and #ThriveOnline.