Image by leighblackall via Flickr Recently, Larry Ragan, Director of Faculty Development for Penn State’s World Campus, was asked “how would you rank the critical competencies for teaching online?  Here are the 6 he identified: 1. Teaching and Learning State objectives, expectations, & policies Establish communication rules & group decision-making norms Give prompt, effective feedback […]

Laptop desks in the computer science building Originally uploaded by maebmij. I recently came across an interesting and comprehensive resource to assist Faculty in effectively planning to use online discussion. Authors Barbara Frey (D.Ed.) and Linda Wojnar (Ed.D.) offer guidelines for planning,implementing and evaluating online discussions. You can access the pdf through the Educause site: […]

Weblogs can be used for many purposes. This one is for sharing information relevant to teaching a distance course at UBC. So far, this has kind of been a one way street. But what about you? I’m sure many of you have comments, stories and issues to share with your colleagues, perhaps you’d like to […]

A few months ago, some colleagues and I had an interesting chat with some of our online instructors about a variety of issues related to facilitating and managing online discussions. Various questions emerged such as: How do I effectively enourage interaction? What is the role of assessment? What is the instructor’s role vs, students’ role […]