Educating Effectively Online: Five Keys to Success
Educating Effectively Online: Five Keys to Success
1. Creating a sense of urgency
The primary key to success for effective online education is creating a sense of urgency for the student. Students must feel that they are engaged in the class, that they are learning and that their teacher is participating in the course with them. Successful online courses require at least a 24 to 48 hour response time for student e-mail and assignment questions. A well-designed course will include immediate feedback from each quiz or test. If the test involves fill-in-the-blank answers or essay questions, then the professor needs to respond within one week of the test's closing date.
2. Clear user interface
The next key to effective online education is the user interface. Many learning management systems (LMS) are overly complicated and not user-friendly. If the student cannot locate the information within the course, the course will not be effective. For the user interface, you want a clean, well-defined navigation structure; course content, communications, and feedback should be available at all times. There should also be links to the university or school district homepage. Moodle, a freely-available LMS, provides a high-quality user interface with all of the background features an online educator requires.
3. Verify your online resources
Another key to effective online education is the availability of online resources. If you have links to outside resources, those links need to be checked on a regular basis (at least once a year) so that students can avoid the hassle of not being able to find an important but unavailable resource.
4. Create a sense of community
The fourth key to effective online education is creating a sense of community. One of the staples of live classroom courses is classroom discussion. With the asynchronous nature of most online courses, some students are on 8:00 a.m. and others are on at 8:00 p.m. The discussion forum has become the method by which we stimulate classroom discussion. One of the most difficult tasks for an instructor is to grade student participation in the discussion. The best way to do this is to set a minimum response threshold and if the student meets the minimum, they get the points.
5. Establish clear structure
Finally, the fifth key to effective online education is clear structure within the course. Students need to know what to study, how they will be assessed, what questions they need to be able to answer, and what discussions they need to complete. Due dates are more like guidelines for the online class. In general, due dates should be flexible provide an initial two-week window, then an absolute cutoff date. Moodle's due date and calendar features allow course designers to provide reminders to students of upcoming events.
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