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Branching Scenario Best Practices Guide
Designed to simulate real-world experiences, branching scenarios are powerful tools for increasing student engagement. Like a choose-your-own-adventure book, a branching scenario invites users to explore a virtual world, using knowledge and skills from their coursework and information shared within the scenario to make decisions. The decisions they make lead them down different pathways (some of which may include embedded documents and videos) towards different endings. Depending on the complexity of the branching scenarios and the choices students make, they can experience a variety of different possible outcomes within a single scenario.
Five Ways to Succeed as an Online Instructor
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.
Written Assignment Best Practices Guide
Formal writing requires sustained focus on content and close attention to detail. For these reasons, written assignments can be an effective assessment tool in graduate courses when they are thoughtfully and purposefully designed. This guide provides recommendations for faculty who are looking to harness the pedagogical benefits of written assignments.
Presentation Best Practices Guide
Many online courses focus on written communication skills, featuring discussion posts, papers, and case study reports among other assignments. However, oral communication and presentation skills are just as integral to students’ success, and, indeed, many employers list presenting as one of the most desirable skills for job candidates (Suhadi et al., 2021).
Group Work Best Practices Guide
Group work in online courses can facilitate student learning in unique ways. In particular, group assignments can provide students with opportunities to engage in authentic tasks and develop collaborative skills applicable to their future careers. Williams, Duray, and Reddy (2006) argue that team learning stimulates student thinking at the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, including application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Group projects can serve a variety of different purposes across a wide range of academic programs and subjects. Additionally, group projects can foster interaction and community building amongst students, which can be especially valuable in an asynchronous online classroom (Martin & Bolliger, 2018).
Game-Based Learning Experiences
Game-based learning (GBL) is a learning experience, or set of learning experiences, delivered through gameplay or game-like activities with defined learning outcomes. GBL is often confused with gamification, which is the application of game elements to a non-gaming experience. GBL engages students cognitively, emotionally, behaviorally, and socioculturally (Plass et al., 2015). Many factors should be considered when designing GBL, including narrative, player positioning, and interactive design (Dickey, 2005).
Problem Based Learning
Problem Based Learning is a teaching method used to facilitate student knowledge acquisition. This teaching method is often confused with Project Based Learning, which centers on students applying knowledge. The focus of Problem Based Learning is students acquiring the knowledge. Since the two methods use the same acronym, they are easily confused, but have different objectives for students.
Taking Stock at the Midpoint of the Term
Halfway through the term isn't a great time to change around a bunch of materials or assignments in your course. However, it is a useful moment to evaluate how the course is going, realign to match the goals you set out at the beginning of the term, and determine what you may be able to tweak to make your course work more effectively for you and for your students. This piece suggests actions you can take at midterm to help shape the second half of the course.
Engagement Series: Introduction
There are many components to consider when developing an online course; a key framework to inform course development is student engagement. The Glossary of Education Reform defines student engagement as “the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education” (Great Schools Partnership, 2016, para. 1). Developing and evaluating course content through the lens of engagement can help instructors create an environment that is conducive to learning and mastery of course outcomes.