August 2008 – Teaching at a Distance

| seven |

Originally uploaded by arquera

If you haven’t heard about the 7 Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education you should know about them. They were originally published in 1987 by Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson. These are widely accepted principles and they have been applied in various contexts. For your review (or if you haven’t seen the original) the link to the original article (reprinted with permission by the Wingspread Journal: Johnson Foundation) is below for download:

Seven Principles for Good Practice by Chickering and Gamson PDF

Good teaching practice, according to the seven principles, emphasizes:

student-faculty contact
cooperation among students
active learning
prompt feedback
time on task
high expectations
diverse talents and ways of learning

The communication tools that we currently have access to (chat, email, VOIP) as well as web based collaboration/social networking tools for students means that we have more opportunities than ever to be successful in implementing these principles in distance teaching. This has led to considerations about how technologies (including WebCT and Vista) can support the principles originally outlined by Chickering and Gamson:

If you are not teaching an online course but are interested in how you might leverage technology to improve your teaching, the TLT Group (Teaching and Learning with Technology) has a public collection of “low threshold” or easy to integrate approaches.

Back to school

Back to school

Originally uploaded by Avolore

It’s close to that time again! If you are new to teaching in distance education, you’ll likely be looking for a few tips to get you started on the right track. Here’s a snippet:

Connect with your learners at the start of term (Sept. 2nd for most of us). The Faculty Service Centre is the best way to do this if you are teaching a print based course or if you want to be in touch before your online course officially opens. You’ll need to know your course and section number. For distance education, the Sept. term is Term A.
Print off your list of Key Contacts for DE. This will come in handy through the term.
Bookmark the DE Instructors’ Guide. This is where you’ll find information and resources about distance teaching.
Bookmark the e-Learning site. This is where you’ll find information about upcoming training sessions for WebCT Vista and other course technologies.

You may also want to reference the Teaching Tips for Online and Print. They’re both short reads and full of links and resources to get you off to a good start for Fall 2008!

Happy start of term, all!