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Five Ways to Succeed as an Online Instructor

September 24, 2021
Whether experienced or new to online teaching, following these tips on online instruction can make the process more intuitive. The online environment may seem vastly different from the classroom, but these tips will make it feel natural, allowing you to improve student experience, increase teaching efficacy, cultivate engagement, and ensure successful course management.

Clear and Quick: The Why and How of Rubrics

September 24, 2021
Rubrics provide students with insight into their performance and mastery of learning outcomes, providing clarity on how grades are assigned and teaching students how to tailor their work. For instructors, rubrics take the guesswork out of deciding how to grade, saving valuable time.

No Sweat Alt Text

September 24, 2021
What is “alt text”? Alt text is descriptive text linked to an image, graph, or other visual content that allows users to understand the visual without viewing it. Any image online should contain alt text, but guidelines differ depending on whether the image is simply decorative or related to other content on the page.

Spreadsheet Accessibility

December 12, 2022
Spreadsheets are used for a broad array of data-related tasks and projects across numerous disciplines. Maximizing the utility of spreadsheets included as course materials requires careful attention towards their contents and formatting. In this post, we present recommendations for enhancing the clarity, consistency, and accessibility of course spreadsheets for students.

Rubrics as a Tool to Support Equity and Inclusion

October 07, 2022
While student populations have become increasingly diverse, many groups, including first-generation, non-native English speakers, and individuals with disabilities, still face barriers and bias that can derail their success in college (Super et al., 2020). Traditional grading practices—including penalties for late work, writing in dialects other than standard English, and even plagiarism— are prone to bias and only perpetuate disparities, the research says (Feldman, 2019; Savini, 2021).

Course Facilitation Checklists

April 10, 2023
Preparing to facilitate your upcoming online course? This checklist can help! With a short, specific list of actions to take just before and just after course launch, you won't have to worry that you're overlooking something important. For more help mapping out your facilitation goals, see the Course Facilitation Plan.

Representation in Course Images

September 27, 2021
How many times have you looked at an image and thought, “Have I seen this before?” Chances are, if you are browsing a stock photo site, it’s often. That feeling of déjà vu occurs because images reflect an amalgam of artistic, cultural, and ideological influences (Hall, 2015).

Using Hotspots

September 24, 2021
A unique way to share information, images with hotspots offer online learners the opportunity to interact with course content. Learners can click or hover on particular parts of an image and receive pop-ups giving them more information. Hotspots represent information in a particular context; thus, they fulfill the multimedia principle—use words and graphics rather than words alone—and the contiguity principle—align words to corresponding graphics (Clark & Mayer, 2016).

Using PowerPoint in a Video

September 22, 2022
The familiarity and ease of PowerPoint make it a natural choice for creating instructional videos. After all, your energy is better spent on planning and recording videos than on learning a new tool. However, creating quality slides still requires significant time and attention to detail.

Designing and Managing Large Online Courses

September 24, 2021
Teaching in the online modality can be tricky on its own, so what about when you have a large class?