Faculty Teaching Tips from Erin Beaver

These are great tips!

• Have students discuss what it takes to be successful in an online class at the start of the online class.  I like to do this the first week and then compile their answers into a slide show. 
• Take a survey at the start of the semester to find out who is in his/her first online class.  Then, I call those students personally after the first few weeks to check in.
• At the start of the semester, I always create a copy of the current semester schedule and re-save it with a new file name.  Then, as I move through the semester, I make adjustments to the schedule, add in notes to myself, etc., as I think about ways to improve the organization/design/etc. of the course. 
• Use a variety of modalities: video/audio, text, images, etc.
• Be consistent in language/terminology.  If I call a given document the “Style & Tone Handout,” I make sure that I do that throughout the shell and in notes to the class.

Lisa