General+Tips+and+Tidbits



From The Rapid eLearning Blog: @http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/

=Online or Face-to-Face=

Here's a PowerPoint presentation with 8 questions to consider when planning what will be online and what will be F2F in your blended course.

**BEST PRACTICES FOR ONLINE TEACHING**
Today I listend to a webcast featuring Rita-Marie Conrad, a co-author (with Judith Boettcher) of //The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips.// Here are the ten best practices for teaching onlne from p. 37 of that book:

__Best practice 1__--Be present at the course site. __Best practice 2__--Create a supportive online course community. __Best practice 3__--Develop a set of explicit expectations for your learner and yourself as to how you will communicate and how much time students should be working on the course each week. __Best practice 4__--Use a variety of large group, small group, and individual work experiences. __Best practice 5__--Use synchronous and asynchronous activities. __Best practice 6__--Ask for informat feedback early in the term. __Best practice 7__--Prepare discussion posts that invite responses, questions, discussions, and reflections. __Best practice 8__--Search out and use content resources that are available in digital format if possible. __Best practice 9__--Combine core concept learning with customized and personalized learning. __Best practice 10__--Plan a good closing and wrap activity for the course.

Remember that these are meant for online learning courses, not necessarily blended courses. Many of them, however, do apply to the online portion of our courses.

I'm also posting the slides from the presentation (in a PDF file). They contain lots of interesting tips for blended learning.