hi everybody, and thanks to those of you who wrote back with suggestions about which topics you are most interested in for the rest of the semester (some folks wrote to the whole list and some folks wrote back to me individually) - for this Thursday, I'll suggest that we do the BEST PRACTICES one: what general guidelines are there about successful online courses and online course design?
 
I think it would be really interesting to brainstorm together what we find to be successful in classroom-based classes, and then see how that transfers to the online environment (if it does), and then think about the online course factors that are totally different from what happens in the classroom. then we can take a look at this great assessment for online course evaluation - it's a course design evaluation, but one of the factors in online courses is that the course design itself has enormous consequences for the actual implementation of the class -
 
http://www.imd.macewan.ca/imd/content.php?contentid=36
 
I'll bring some copies as handouts on Thursday.
 
I actually did this self-asssement and found it enormously helpful, although it took a good hour to complete it for my course: http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore/about/admin/macewan_evaluation.htm
 
I think this will give us plenty to talk about on Thursday; if not, we can move on to the "IT General Help" topic, which is actually one of the topics raised by the assessment (making sure students have the IT support they need).
 
thanks everybody - and I'll see you Thursday,
 
Laura