Picture of books and glassesFor our next learning activity, we invite you to explore selected resources. Each week, we provide a small number of selected resources (articles or videos) related to the theme of the week. The resources are meant to deepen your understanding of the theme and support you in the other learning activities to follow.

We have provided a brief introduction to each resource, as well as some guiding questions to focus your reading. Questioning is an established reading strategy that supports readers in engaging with a resource and improves comprehension. Keeping these questions (below) top of mind as you explore the resources, will also support you with the rest of the learning activities to follow this week. You may wish to keep notes as you find the answers to these questions as you are reading/watching.

  • What are the key features of the online learning environment? Of the online learning experience? How have these features changed over the last decades?
  • What is the instructor’s role in online learning? Is their role different in the online learning environment compared to face to face?
  • What “best practices” are you noticing? Which ones are common across the different resources? Which are different?
  • What facilitation strategies are mentioned that you are already doing or planning to do? Which are new ideas for you?

Week 1 resources

Our first reading is a chapter from an open educational resource by lead author Matt Crosslin, Ph.D., a researcher with the Learning Innovation and Networked Knowledge Research Lab, University of Texas at Arlington. This week is about exploring the essentials of online facilitation. It may be helpful, therefore, to start this week with an overview of effective online facilitation practices. You will read:

  • Crosslin, M., et al. (2019). Effective practices. Chapter 5, Creating online learning experiences. Pressbooks.

Our next resource offers a “toolkit” for the online teacher, prepared and shared by an American group, the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). The page includes a number of videos and downloadable resources that were compiled in response to the Covid-19 crisis. However, we believe that the information shared will remain relevant to online instructors even after the crisis is well behind us.

Our third and final resource for the week is a post written by Flower Darby, the Director of Teaching for Student Success at Northern Arizona University. What we like about Darby’s article is the way that she explores some of the key concerns of instructors who are new to online teaching, unpacking jargon, and offering some practical tips to enhance the learning experience for students.

(Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash)

[Note for FLO facilitators: We recommend you include an audio option for the text above here if using a platform that does not have an audio feature built in. Remove this note before offering starts.]

Last modified: Wednesday, 5 August 2020, 8:54 AM