Teaching: Best Practices for Online Courses Roundtable

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Overview

This roundtable is devoted to one of the most relevant pedagogical topics of the past few years: designing and teaching online courses. Since the transition to remote learning brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and beyond, a basic aptitude with online courses is becoming a common requirement for faculty instructors. Yet many instructors reasonably feel a bit uncomfortable with online courses, and some question whether their pedagogical effectiveness is compromised by the remote format. This panel aims to raise a discussion around such concerns, and address such questions as:
- How do I avoid “Zoom burnout” and maintain student attention and engagement in my online course?
- How should one go about designing an online course while still meeting the same learning outcomes of a traditional in-person course?
- What kind of assessments work best in online courses?
- What success have other instructors had in utilizing digital tools (e.g., breakout rooms for group assignments) in their online courses?
What are the best approaches for asynchronous vs. synchronous online courses?

Section

• Professional Development / Professional Development

Chair

• Stephen E. Sussman, Barry University

Participants

• Kimberly Saks, University of Michigan-Flint

• James A Newman, Southeast Missouri State University

• Danny Fuerstman, State College of Florida-Manatee-Sarasota

• Malliga Och, Denison University

• Michael Makara, University of Central Missouri