Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Engage Students through Media

Teaching online allows you to reach your students through many avenues that would be too time consuming in the classroom.

Make sure to include all or, at least most, of the following types of media/learning modules in your online class:

  • Photos
    • Create photo albums using Flickr, Photobucket, or Picasa
      • Pictures of historical figures, places, events, rituals, etc., can draw the student closer to the course material
  • Documentaries
    • There are lots of free documentaries, movies, and videos out in the internet. Don't worry about copyright, as long as you are not profiting from screening the movies/documentaries, then you should be covered by the Fair Use doctrine in the US Copyright Law.
  • Powerpoints
    • Do not overload your powerpoint slides with paragraphs.
  • Recorded Lectures - audio and/or visual of professor lecturing 


  • Links to important websites
    • Provide your students with resources to writing styles, academic journals, scholarly databases, and any website you feel is relevant to the course.
  • Music - upload contemporary music for the epochs you are studying, if appropriate for the subject. You can link the students to the songs, if you do not own them.
    • Discussion Boards
      • Have students respond to a topic and make them respond to at least three other posts through out a data range.
    • Audio clips
      •  If appropriate to your course, include radio clips and/or lecture clips
    • News clips
      • Post relevant news stories/reports and have students discuss them
    • Journals
      • If appropriate for your course, make the students keep a weekly blog or journal of their reactions to the course material. The more the students engage the content, the better they will do on their exams and essays.
    • Site Visits
      • If appropriate for the course, have the students write a report on a business, institution, or organization by having them visit the actual location. 
      • Since you may have students from all around the world taking your online course, make sure they clear the location with you before they select the site.
    • Interviews
      • If appropriate for the course, have your students conduct interviews to develop their investigative reporting skills.
    • Examples of previously submitted papers, showing formatting and writing styles
      • You should inform your students at the beginning of the semester what level of work you expect from them.
    • Post Readings/Articles
      • Scan articles/chapters from books instead of making your students more money (the tuition gets more expensive each year)
      • Assign ebooks 
      • Search for pdfs on the internet (almost all universities have access to tons of virtual libraries and databases)

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