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Preparing to Teach Online

In partnership with Online Programs, FCLD again will be offering a seven-part seminar series designed to prepare instructors for online teaching and learning.  Participating faculty will be enrolled in a Blackboard Course called Preparing to Teach Online and all live sessions will be held in the Collaborate web conferencing room of this course. Faculty interested in registering should email fcld@hartford.edu so you can be added to the course.  All sessions will be held in the Woods Classroom in Mortensen Library on Fridays from 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

SESSION 1: PLANNING AND DESIGNING AN ONLINE COURSE

“What do I need to know to be an effective online instructor?” In this first seminar, we will answer this question, as well as demonstrate best practices for transforming face-to-face courses into online courses, discuss principles of learning objectives and chunking, build a Blackboard Content Folder, and share useful resources, such as a course development template, that will help you as you design your online course.

SESSION 2: CREATING ORGANIZED & EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION

In this hands-on seminar, we will use Blackboard to apply what was discussed in week one. Participants will learn different ways to structure and organize course content, using Content Folders to create easy-to-follow online lessons. We will explore the many diverse sources of ready-made course content available on the Internet, and cover important legal concerns, such as accessibility, FERPA, HIPAA, Copyright and Fair Use.

SESSION 3: BASIC TOOLS FOR ONLINE INSTRUCTION

Just like any instruction, we need to be able to communicate with students, collect assignments, and facilitate group work such as case studies and projects. This seminar covers basic Blackboard tools that are essential for online instruction including Email, Announcements and Alerts, the Assignment Tool, SafeAssign, Blackboard Annotate for grading Assignments, and Journals.

SESSION 4: FOSTERING INTERACTION AND COLLABORATION (ASYNCHRONOUS BEST PRACTICES)

Distance education means there is “a distance between learner and teacher which is not merely geographic, but educational and psychological as well” (Moore, 1983). One hallmark of a well- designed online course is that it uses interaction to close this distance, building in lots of different ways for students to work together and form their own online community. During this seminar, participants will learn how to foster and encourage interactivity using tools such as the Discussion Board, Blogs, Wikis and Groups.

SESSION 5: REMOTE/SYNCHRONOUS LEARNING BEST PRACTICES

In this session, we will show you how to hold your classes online in a synchronous format using Blackboard Collaborate. We will cover how to use polling solutions such as the built-in polling engine in Collaborate and the application Poll Everywhere. Additionally, we will show you how to set up Breakout Rooms for group work, as well as OneDrive and OneNote for document sharing and collaboration. Finally, we will cover some housekeeping for conference recordings, as well as show a comparison of various web conferencing tools currently available to faculty.

SESSION 6: TESTS, GRADING, FEEDBACK, AND SUPPORT

Your course is designed, your content prepared and loaded, your instruction and assignments align with your objectives; there’s a good mix of media presented, and opportunities for collaboration and interaction -- but how will you inform your students about their progress? Grade Center! Learn basic and necessary housekeeping of Grade Center and ways to set up Grade Center to reflect your grading scenario. We will also demonstrate and discuss ways to offer feedback and online support for students in your course.

SESSION 7: ACTIVE LEARNING & LECTURE TOOLS

Just because you are not face-to-face with your online students, it doesn't mean you can't 'talk' with them, creating video ‘lecturettes’ to engage students and prepare them for assignments. Using audio and video clips, you can demonstrate worked problems, introduce a topic, summarize a complex issue, etc. We will be covering the suite of Ensemble tools, including: Anthem for recording lectures offline and sharing them with students in Blackboard, creating playlists for organizing videos/audio files in the media library, and creating an Ensemble Dropbox for student video assignment submissions. We will also cover quick quiz tools, such as Ensemble Quizzes, Quizlet and Cram.