Category Archives: Teaching Methodology

Online courses have become an incredibly popular way for students and employees to advance their education or professional development. Teaching an online course requires different methods from the traditional classroom, so it’s important that teachers adapt or develop their skills to the online learning environment, to make their materials effective and engaging for learners. 

Let’s look at 5 strategies you can implement to improve your online teaching and make your eLearning course a successful experience for both you and your learners.

1. Engage With Your Learners Online

Without your physical presence in the classroom, it’s vital that you establish a virtual presence at the very beginning of the eLearning course. Online teachers need to be engaging and supporting students right from the start and for the duration of the course, to maintain an effective learning community.

2. Create A Supportive Learning Environment

As an online teacher, you have an opportunity to create a supportive online community for your learners.

The best way to achieve this is through encouraging both teacher-to-student engagement and student-to-student interaction.

3. Use A Mix Of Learning Tools For Better Engagement

These days, we’re fortunate to have the technology to create virtual learning environments that allow us to collaborate and engage just as well as if we were in the classroom.

As Dr Boettche says, “the variety of activities that are now possible online makes it possible to create many types of effective learning environments.”

4. Provide Ongoing Feedback

Feedback is an essential component of all effective learning environments – including online.

As an online teacher, your feedback will help to create an eLearning experience that is informative, engaging, and motivational for the learner. 

5. Make eLearning Content Mobile

It’s wise to acknowledge the importance of mobile learning for online teachers, with students and employees now accustomed to using their mobile devices for learning.

Mobile learning holds key advantages for learners, allowing them to access up-to-date course materials and relevant content anywhere, anytime. With bite-sized pieces of information available to be digested quickly and easily, learners can work through course materials at their own pace, assisting both performance and productivity.

Source: elearningindustry.com

Today, organizations and academic institutes require robust and strategic learning management systems (LMS) that can automate manual processes of traditional tools. Effective learning management systems can empower departments and enable business growth, as well as further educational initiatives.

Unlike the human researchers, the computer program was able to identify about twice as many systems. However, after additional investigation, the human researchers successfully confirmed about 97% of the info provided by Kimmon’s program.

Over the years, LMS has become a vital tool to achieve enterprise learning objectives. It is no wonder the LMS market will be worth $22.4 billion by 2023. Learning management systems, for instance, can be used in several formats. You can use it as a formal, experimental, or social managerial compliance training program.

Moreover, the role of eLearning to generate revenue for enterprises continues to evolve. LMS personalizes feedback to promote a self-regulating learning process. In fact, LMS has been proven to increase the effectiveness of students’ and employees’ learning outcomes.

The Evolving Role of the Learning Management System

A revolutionary change in the LMS is the contextualization of the learning process for teachers and employers. The right LMS can enable increased interaction between instructors and learners. Consequently, a collaborative virtual learning experience improves outcomes for online learners.

Adoption of LMS by K-12 Schools

It is true – the skepticism towards LMS no longer exists. And why would it? The majority of institutions have successfully implemented the systems in higher education to improve student’s learning process. Similarly, LMS is now widely used by K-12 schools. It does, however, present an opportunity for researchers to learn the standardized testing process at such a scale.

What’s interesting is that the adoption of an LMS solution goes beyond higher standardized test scores. However, this effectiveness is interconnected with the cost and nature of the system itself. For example, an education system should have a proprietary system configuration, while an open-source solution is preferable for an organization.

Source: blogs.onlineeducation.touro.edu

Online teaching is increasingly common at many types of higher education institutions, ranging from hybrid courses that offer a combination of in-person and online instruction, to fully online experiences and distance learning. The following resources provide guidelines for creating an online course, best practices for teaching online, and strategies for assessing the quality of online education

Online references for the following topics: instructor and student roles, building online learning communities, online course design, examples of online courses and degree programs, etc.

CRLT Occasional Paper #18: Online Teaching (Zhu, Dezure, & Payette, 2003)
This paper explores key questions to consider when planning an online course and provides guidelines for effective instructional practices.

Instructional Design (Illinois Online Network)
An ever-changing collection of articles related to teaching online (including Tip of the Month), basic resources, and spotlight issues. As this site is well-maintained, it is worth occasionally checking in to see if new material has been added.

Instructional Strategies for Online Courses (Illinois Online Network)
An ever-changing collection of articles related to teaching online (including Tip of the Month), basic resources, and spotlight issues. As this site is well-maintained, it is worth occasionally checking in to see if new material has been added.

The site provides a summary of instructional strategies for online course. Effective online instruction depends on learning experiences appropriately designed and facilitated by knowledgeable educators. Because learners have different learning styles or a combination of styles, online educators should design activities that address their modes of learning in order to provide significant experiences for each class participant.

Research on Best Practices (San Juan College)
These pages present a summary of research related to best practices of teaching online. It is divided into 4 sections: content and structure, communication, assessment, and references. The symbols (described below) indicate our recommendations for application of the concepts in your course.

Source: www.crlt.umich.edu