Getting Started
If you are new to this site or our faculty development, I can also enrolled you on a new site that I am beta testing called Best Practices for Online Teaching. To access the site, please send me either your preferred email or your Pacific ID, then you will be able to go to http://pacific.rsmart.com and enter your pacific user name and password. The primary purpose of the course is to give an overview of general best practices for online instruction rather than specific mechanics of setting up a particular site in Sakai.
If you are interested in more "How-To" regarding Sakai, there is a great online help documentation located at https://pacific.rsmart.com/xsl-portal/help/main . Additionally, if you are interested in more specifics regarding the Sakai learning management system (LMS) I have started a YouTube channel called "Pacific Elearning" (http://www.youtube.com/pacificelearning) where I have uploaded some tutorials and overviews of Pacific's implementation of Sakai. You can also access those videos and more through the navigation bar on the left side of this page.
There are a lot of other great resources around this site, but to start, I have collected some basics to start of with here:
- Improving the Use of Discussion Boards (WPI Technology Center) Some notes and guidelines for instructors on how to structure discussion board prompts and some advice on how to grade discussion boards.
- Proposed Competencies for Online Instructors (GoogleDoc) A list of ten competencies that are important for online instructors to exhibit based on Virgil E. Varvel Jr. "Master Online Teacher Competencies." This outline also provides the basis for the development of the eQ program worksheet. More details forthcoming.
- Guide to Online Tools for Teachers (GoogleDoc) A brief guide to various Web 2.0 tools broken down by category that may be useful in an educational setting.
- A Brief Guide for creating a Great Online Experience (GoogleDoc) 11 best practices for creating a more productive online environment for student learning. While not necessarily required, these are guidelines that are encouraged.
- An Overview of Security Features in Sakai (Word Doc) An overview of how to discourage cheating in your online assessments.
- Cheating in Online Student Assessment: Beyond Plagiarism by Neil C. Rowe
- Honesty in Online Education by Virgil E. Varvel
Additional Readings
- Blended Learning Toolkit. Resources and discussions centered around research based approaches to blended and hybrid learning.
- Student Collaboration in the Online Classroom (pdf) We are stressing the importance of student collaboration in online courses as it provides one of the most successful approaches to student learning in an online environment. This document from Faculty Focus has some good information on student collaboration and best practices along those lines.
- SMOW Workload Management (pdf) SMOW stands for Strategies for Managing Online Workflow and was developed by Larry Ragan from Penn State. This is a report to the Sloan foundation regarding multiple strategies in 1) course authoring, 2) teaching, 3) course revision, and 4) institution, that can help lessen the time burden for developing and teaching online courses.
- Theory and Practice of Online Learning (pdf) This is a textbook (distributed electronically for free by AU press) that I have found useful. The first part has articles that are more theoretical in nature while the later articles are a bit more practical.
- 50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom (HTML) A great collection of ideas that, while focused on Wikis in particular, could certainly be extrapolated to other collaborative mediums such as Google Docs or perhaps enen blogs.
- Copyright Basics for Online Education. Presentation by Joe Leone, a copyright lawyer, who discusses some of the basics regarding copyright issues as they affect online education. He covers types of content that can be used safely, how to get permission, fair use for face-to-face vs. online, and ownership issues for online presentation.