Part 3/5 of the MEAS Course on E-Learning

1. Effective Online Teaching Strategies
Karen Vignare, Michigan State University

2. Agenda
• Objectives
• Introduction
• Definitions
• Discussion
• Summary
• References

3. Objectives
• Understand Community of Inquiry and how
interrelated learning occurs
• Learn various strategies currently used online
• Discuss which make the most sense

4. Community of Inquiry
• Teaching Presence
• Social Presence
• Cognitive Presence

5. Teaching Presence
• planning and design of the course structure,
instructional process, interaction, and evaluation
aspects of the online course.
• presenting material or asking questions that help
students learn content, focusing the discussion on
specific issues, then providing feedback, diagnosing
misconceptions, and providing resources from a
variety of sources.
• Facilitated discourse described as student
engagement in interacting and building meaning
through online discourse.

6. Teaching Presence
• Facilitated discourse described as student
engagement in interacting and building meaning
through online discourse.

7. Social Presence
• Two primary constructs :intimacy and immediacy
• Intimacy involves physical factors like physical
distance, eye contact, vocal expressions, and facial
expressions like smiling.
• Immediacy is the psychological distance between
communicators. Immediacy can be displayed both
verbally and non-verbally

8. Cognitive Presence
• Needs Teaching and Social Presence to be effective
• Practical Inquiry Model
• A triggering event, exploration, integration and
resolution.

9. Teaching Strategies
• Lecture
• Discussion
• Learning Contracts
• Forum
• Small Group Work
• Project

10. Teaching Strategies
• Case Study
• Self-Directed Learning
• Collaborative Learning
• Mentorship
• Role Play
• Assessment

11. Lecture
• Most widely used instructional strategy
• Effective at transferring information
• Ineffective for making students active learners
• Online—lecture can be very good for language
issues, setting the stage for discussion, required
before attending course
• Requires more preparation online

12. Discussion
• For asynchronous learning a highly interactive format
• Discussion online can include everyone
• Can be required as part of a grade
• Does require creating authentic and engaging
learning questions
• Almost all course management systems include
discussion boards

13. Learning Contracts
• Allows student to suggest and set a contract on what
they will learn given course objectives
• Works well for independent learning and project
based outcomes
• Works well for teaching students about contracts and
work expectations

14. Forum
• Allows students to become teacher/experts
• Run forums or symposium online
• Typically a group of students work together to
present a topic
• They then moderate through a discussion questions
on the topic with other students

15. Small Group Work
• Variations of discussion tools
• Assign students to work on topics
• As a team they must prepare answers, investigate
problems, arrive at solutions
• Have team present findings to others

16. Project
• A project tends to be a long-term like assigning a
paper
• It can be active or a paper
• But online the value is to make the information
found sharable
• Allows instructors to find issues before the paper is
turned in for a grade
• Could be work for a company as well

17. Case Study
• Allows a students to apply course topics to a case
(problem, company, industry, etc.)
• Each week students provide more information on
what they have found
• These can be published and help students show skills

18. Self-directed Learning
• Similar to learning contracts in some ways
• Student determines goals like internships or active
review of processes used in a course
• Could also be self-taught
• Often used in corporate settings
• Requires significant preparation from instructor

19. Collaborative Learning
• Whole group learning again using discussion
• Could also use collaborative tools like wikis where
students build a chapter or book
• Again can be displayed and published

20. Mentorship
• Creates a sense of responsibility
• Peer reviewing is a likely example
• Requires student to actively coach and grade another
student
• Often used in writing assignments

21. Role Play
• Assign roles for a project
• Often done in smaller groups
• It can be a corporation, a community based
organization, or coop
• Faculty assigns roles but students act out the roles
providing documentation

22. Assessment
• Most online tools allow for testing
• Testing can be very useful for practice, knowledge
check and grades
• Often books come with test questions
• Testing engines allow for many formats

23. Discussion
• Which of these tools make sense in your course?

24. Summary
• Learned importance of teaching, social and cognitive
presence
• Learned online strategies for teaching effectively
• Discussed applying them to your course (s)

25. References
• http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/tutorials/ped
agogy/instructionalstrategies.asp
• http://www.csuchico.edu/celt/roi/
• http://communitiesofinquiry.com/model

26. Terms of Use
© Karen Vignare, Michigan State University, MEAS project.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Users are free:
• to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
• to Remix — to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
• Attribution — Users must attribute the work to the
author(s)/institution (but not in any way that suggests that the authors/
institution endorse the user or the user’s use of the work).

27. Disclaimer
This presentation was made possible by the
generous support of the American people
through the United States Agency for
International Development, USAID. The
contents are the responsibility of the
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the
views of USAID or the United States
Government.