Prep for free online "fish bowl" 5/31 2pmET re: Teaching Online for Beginners & Smart Dummies. Help plan tlt.gs/frlv TLTGroup FridayLive!

Excerpts (below) and full article & Bain's book (links below) good prep for our planning session this Friday, 2pmET May 31.   Free Registration.
Leaders:  Steve Gilbert, Beth Dailey, and still confirming other Silver Cloudian stalwarts!

"Whereas best practices are clearly necessary for good teaching, we do not think that they are sufficient for excellent teaching. If becoming an outstanding teacher merely entails implementing recommended best practices, then there would be many more outstanding teachers than there currently are. Clearly, there are good and bad (or more and less effective) ways to implement these practices. There seem to be things that cannot simply be borrowed, copied, or plugged into courses. 

"(1) Fostering student engagement

• Create a community of learners
• Foster student-to-faculty and student-to-student interaction
• Judicious and strategic use of humor
• Creative and engaging use of videos, chats, podcasts, wikis, and discussion forums
• Use blogs to facilitate reflective thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge construction

"(2) Stimulating intellectual development

• Create natural critical learning environments
• Generate provocative acts, questions, statements
• Reflect on students’ inaccurate and incomplete preconceptions or mental models 
• Use technology to create engaging and authentic content

"(3) Building rapport with students

• Understand one’s student population and determine the amount of help needed 
• Let students get to know their teacher
• Use introductory video or other self-disclosure resources
• Keep written records of communication that include relevant student information 
• Be flexible with deadlines and due dates
• Provide individualized feedback on assignments and activities"

Above excerpted from "What the Best Online Teachers Should Do," by T. M. Brinthaupt, L. S. Fisher, J. G. Gardner, D. M. Raffo, and J. B. Woodard, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132 USA, Tom.Brinthaupt@mtsu.edu , as published in  MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, Vol. 7, No.4, December 2011 
See below for abstract.
 Article based on What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain, Harvard University Press; April 30, 2004 

Abstract & 3 additional summary excerpts below


"As a core project, a university eLearning Pedagogy Faculty Learning Community (FLC) chose to apply recommendations for the “art” of good teaching to the online realm. There is relatively little discussion of this issue in the literature. In this paper, we use Bain’s (2004) book What the Best College Teachers Do to discuss some of the major ways that the practices of effective teaching in general can be applied to online teaching in particular. Specifically, we explore methods of fostering student engagement, stimulating intellectual development, and building rapport with students when teaching online. This analysis provides a much-needed “art of teaching” set of recommendations that complements the “science of teaching” best practices approach to online pedagogy."

..."In summary, student engagement with teachers, peers, and content is vital in the online learning environment (see Table 1, part 1). While there are various strategies, tools, and techniques to achieve this end, teachers are ultimately striving to create an environment that allows learning to flourish. This effort is critical regardless of the course delivery mode.
..."In summary, when it comes to stimulating intellectual development in students, questions are the key to creating a natural critical learning environment (see Table 1, part 2). Questions are universal; they can be asked and answered anytime or anywhere. They work best when the students ask them or when the students find them interesting.
..."...when it comes to building rapport with students, the best online teachers should understand the characteristics of their students and adapt accordingly (see Table 1, part 3). Underprepared, first-generation students probably should be treated differently from a graduating senior. Students differ in their ability to adjust to college, the level of monitoring and scaffolding they need, the amount of experience they have with online learning and the course management system, and so on. An important element of rapport building is that teachers are flexible – with regard to getting to know their students, getting their students to know them, working around deadlines, and creating an atmosphere that enhances learning.