School and district leaders are challenged to communicate with transparency and positivity with families and communities; however, over the past decade, social media has become an important avenue for communication. An appropriate use of social media can be a delicate endeavor, as errors in use or negative reactions can become a flashpoint. This…

Freedom of expression is the core political ideal undergirding American democracy and recent attacks on freedom of speech are a direct threat to the liberties and rights guaranteed in the United States Constitution. Freedom of expression is essential for participatory democracy, scientific progress, individualism, and civic education in K-12…

Engaging and motivating learners to successfully complete their studies are crucial elements for the success of distance educators around the world. The researchers' AIM newsletter, which is formatted in accordance with motivational learning theory, has been delivered to first-year learners in economics at Open Polytechnic of New Zealand from 2010…

Effective mentors set clear expectations for their work with the teachers they support. This is a critical step in the process of building trust between mentor and mentee, and it is never more important than when mentors conduct observations of teachers as they engage in classroom instruction. With much teaching now occurring online, mentoring is…

Classroom management is a vital skill for all teachers. Special education teacher educators are tasked with ensuring that teacher candidates are prepared to implement evidence-based practices for the prevention and intervention of challenging behaviors. Many teacher candidates are taking their coursework in an asynchronous online format, which…

We draw on our experiences with mentoring two students to develop a framework for undergraduate research projects with Twitter data. Leveraging backward design principles, we share our learning objectives and rubric for summative assessments. To illustrate the value of Twitter as a data source, we detail methods for collecting and analyzing…

Many instructors question the move to online teaching and learning and it is often met with resistance as they fear that on-line learning will be more structurally didactic. In particular, one of the major concerns is that the value of face-to-face discussions will be lost. This is a core concern for courses that require the development of…

Courses: Undergraduate courses in interpersonal communication, nonverbal communication, relational communication, computer-mediated communication (CMC), and intercultural communication, as well as basic communication courses. Objectives: The purpose of this activity is twofold: (1) to demonstrate how nonverbal communication shapes content and…

Distance librarians working with an online doctoral program at Johns Hopkins University are asked by both students and faculty to provide a large amount of library support -- without being embedded into the curriculum or the individual courses. Program administrators and faculty were resistant to allow librarians into the course management system…

Sometimes users need to be asked if they need help. This is difficult with online users, because in-person cues cannot be used to engage when the users need assistance. Proactive chat widgets help to solve this problem as the chat box slides out onto the screen and prompts the user for help. The need for the proactive chat widget was also seen as…

The rapid shift to online instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of motivationally enhanced and emotionally supportive instruction during this stressful time. In this paper we demonstrate how five theoretically situated and empirically supported motivational design principles can be used to create effective…

Managers now emphasize the importance of soft interpersonal skills for success in business. The authors provide an active learning approach to collaboratively teach students basic soft skills that are needed in most careers. There are initial startup costs for the instructor, but this effort soon reaps extraordinary rewards for students. In the…

In this case, we focus on two innovations in the design of competitive discussions for a high stakes learning context. The designer created the intervention to provide learners first-hand discussion experiences despite large class sizes. It was a business communication course, and the large class sizes and group dynamics previously had inhibited…

Widespread school closures resulting from the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 have forced PK-12 teacher and teacher educators' use of technology into educational and instructional planning and decisions. This national crisis has signaled that US teacher preparation programs must embrace non-traditional, innovative, and progressive approaches to…

This paper outlines a collaborative effort to respond and support the instructional needs and concerns of teacher educators due to the challenges posed by the sudden onset of emergency remote teaching at the university level. The School of Teacher Education members formed a synergistic Remote Learning Community, developed an action plan and…