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Resources for Online Instructors

Make a Personal Connection in Your Online Classroom

Advice to post a faculty bio and develop online presence are not uncommon, but when I look out at my class roster in the school’s learning management system (LMS), on a sea of new names at the beginning of each term, my focus has increasingly become direct instructor-student exchange with each person. It’s always been […]


How To Break into Online Teaching

Online teaching can seem like a great gig. The convenience and flexibility afforded by online delivery is a draw for students and instructors alike. But, finding online teaching jobs seems to be getting more challenging. It’s an unusual situation to see that even though the number of positions increases, there is more competition as the […]


5 Education Resources Worth Paying For

Anyone working within a budget will tell you that “free” is preferred, especially when looking for resources to assist us with our online courses. And while I’m a proponent of free options, such as those that can be found for career exploration and with open academic journals, sometimes it’s difficult to find exactly what we […]


8 Ideas to Inspire Your Online Teaching

Where do you find your inspiration? I’ve seen this question emerge in a number of different ways via LinkedIn Groups, newsletters, Twitter, etc. We are all susceptible to feeling run down from time to time, and it can seem like we are covering the same ground in our professional and academic conversations. Yet finding inspiration […]


Exploring LearningRegistry.org

Did you know the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and Department of Defense (DOD) are sharing learning resources online? LearningRegistry.org is the entry point for more information about this project, which began in 2010. Led by the DOE’s Office of Educational Technology and the DOD’s Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative, the collaboration involves multiple federal offices, […]


Educators Connect, Collaborate, and Commiserate Online

Much like online learning, teaching at a distance can be a lonely existence. Fortunately, the ways in which we can communicate with each other online are growing. While many online programs do a terrific job with faculty development – providing new instructors with orientations, initial training, and continued learning opportunities, such as workshops and in-house […]


Calling All Online Instructors: It’s Connected Educator Month!

How are you connecting with your colleagues? As part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Connected Online Communities of Practice (COCP) project, the first ever “Connected Educator Month” reminds us of the benefits of learning from our teaching peers at all levels of education. A primary goal of the event is to encourage us to […]


Online Teaching and Learning: The 2012 Effective Practice Awards

Looking for new ideas for your online course? This annual awards program from The Sloan Consortium highlights innovative online teaching and learning strategies with demonstrated evidence of success. A seven-member panel reviews the practices that have been added to the system throughout the year – each practice goes through and initial submission and peer review […]


How Usable Is Your Online Course Content?

The worlds of web design and online learning are interconnected in many ways. As an instructional designer, I work to ensure that courses are effective not only in terms of online navigation and working links, but also in the presentation of meaningful content and interaction. Not all websites are created equal – some have much […]


Online Program Retention: What About the Faculty?

One of the greatest potential benefits of online education is extending the reach of expert faculty members to a wide audience of learners. Recruiting and retaining these instructors is costly for schools in terms of time and resources, and with a rise in adjunct teaching, there are growing concerns from all sides about making sure […]