The growth in online education has prompted a focus on ensuring students are engaged, persistent, and successful in their studies. A recognized challenge with online learning is developing a community of learners, where students feel connected to their peers and instructor and experience a sense of belonging. In this article, we highlight using…

This article outlines a three-phased approach to enhancing online student-instructor interaction using asynchronous threaded discussions: check-ins. These instructor-initiated touchpoints, a form of Classroom Assessment Technique, are staged throughout the grading period to help affirm online presence, clarify expectations, monitor performance,…

Facilitating discussions is an integral part of virtual, synchronous and asynchronous adult and higher education settings. This article offers effective strategies for supporting learners and guiding discussion, particularly about social and critical content.

Classroom instruction focused on discussion-based learning opportunities can provide productive and inclusive learning experiences for all students, including students with learning disabilities in mathematics and those without learning disabilities. Mathematical discourse allows students to share their ideas, justify their thinking, critique the…

The shift of evidence-based, active and inquiry-based pedagogy to online modalities has typically been done with a synchronous model, using video conferencing technology to facilitate interaction and collaboration amongst students. Such an approach can be infeasible for some students and create inequitable situations within a class. This paper…

Restrictions on in-person teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic severely challenged higher education practices worldwide. While didactic delivery of course content is easily achievable with virtual teaching technologies, promoting critical engagement with this material can be more difficult, particularly with classes of larger size and lower…

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…

The Wisconsin Master Gardener Program team used the Google+ Community platform to provide an engaging online discussion forum for asynchronous continuing education experiences. Applications of such a tool for volunteer online education have numerous benefits, including the capacity for asynchronous posting, ease of posting, privacy options, wide…

This article provides several strategies for using a learning management system to engage online students and to promote the development of self-regulated learning skills in a 4-week accelerated summer course.

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…

As online learning grows, we have an exciting opportunity and responsibility to create online discussion structures that promote engaging, generative, and discursive conversations that increase critical thinking and reflection. Organic-style discussions that are similar to classroom conversations increase critical thinking skills and offer a…

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Albright College changed its classroom courses to an online format starting at the middle of the semester. This communication describes the transformation of the remaining semester for the lecture of the general chemistry course for majors. Video, ungraded and graded quizzing activities, and discussion…

This essay expounds on the merits and demerits of two social studies instructional strategies (cooperative learning and discussions) through virtual means in the current COVID-19 global pandemic, and offers eight helpful guidelines in addressing the strategies for social studies instructors. The merits of virtual cooperative learning and…

Undergraduate students living on-campus and taking online and face-to-face courses concurrently, are the predominant consumer of online classes (Seaman et al., 2018). However, they have lower rates of persistence for online courses as compared to face-to-face courses (Hart, 2012; Xu & Jaggars, 2011). Part of the reason could be due to the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is sharing out basic guidelines and examples from an extended collaboration to move educators move online while avoiding synchronous meetings. "gPortfolios" are public (to the class) pages where students write responses to carefully constructed engagement routines. Students then discuss their work with…