How to Teach Online

The World Wide Web, and in particular Dakota Wesleyan University’s course management system known as TigerNet, provides faculty with unique opportunities to promote learning at higher cognitive levels. Any professor can shovel the syllabus and some lecture notes onto TigerNet and say he is teaching online. Effectively using the power of the Internet to promote higher order learning and critical thinking takes some creativity and special effort on the part of faculty members, but the payoff in improved achievement of student learning outcomes can make the effort quite worthwhile.

On these pages, you will find guides to various aspects of teaching online. Most of these were prepared for use in the Creating Online Teaching and Learning Environments (COTLE) workshop first offered to DWU faculty during summer 2005.

While these papers are specific to DWU, other non-profit educational institutions are hereby granted permission to download, revise, and distribute these guides internally for faculty training purposes, as long as the original source is credited. Commercial use is prohibited without the specific permission of Dakota Wesleyan University.

Using Electronic Resources in Course Activities
Students can benefit from many readings beyond the course textbook, or in place of a course textbook. This short article describes how you can incorporate full text of journal articles, individual book chapters, conference papers, and other publications into your course, either through direct links or electronic coursepacks.

Using The Power of the Web in Course Activities
OK, you've Googled and found it. Now what do you do with it? This short paper gives you some ideas about how guided activities using web resources can be powerful learning experiences applying your course content in real world situations.

Facilitating Course Communications
This is a short paper discussing reasons for conducting online interactions, both on a one-to-one basis with students as well as in group discussions in the Forums portlet.

Working With Alternate Student E-mail Addresses
Students have the option of changing their e-mail addresses in TigerNet to a personal account that they check more routinely. The problem is that not all the messages that you send get through to them. This paper describes why, and what you should do about it.

Effective Student Assessment in an Online Environment
The title says "in an Online Environment", but this applies equally in any kind of instructional setting. The author’s father-in-law was an Army helicopter pilot. In one of his training activities, he was required to take the helicopter engine apart, then put it back together. For his assessment, did they give him a multiple choice test? No, he had to fly the helicopter!! THAT is assessment!!