As the holidays approach there is a lot to be thankful for, this includes being thankful for our job and feeling appreciated at what we do. Being instructors and going through large numbers of students, sometimes pretty quickly, we can forget that what we do makes a difference and that we are in fact appreciated by our peer, students, and deans. I found steps to find appreciation in your work life and I am placing the ones that pertain to what we do as instructors, these come from edutopica.org

Integrating Faith Into Your Classroom: How Can This Be Done??

            Many people struggle with the boundaries of what can be shared about faith within the classroom. Others struggle with understanding how to implement faith in the classroom when they do come from that type of background. Instructors either never attempt to do this because they feel absolutely uncomfortable doing it or they do it as many times as they can because it is a part of their fiber. Where ever an instructor…

Regardless of the many virtues of group work within the online classroom setting, one of the most frequent complains I receive from students is about their collaborative learning community (CLC) assignments. Students often complain about the lack or type of communication occurring in the CLC forum, a main cause might be the lack of practice communicating in such a forum. The inconstancy of participation by teammates is another source of frustration, as students may have differing perceptions of…

Creating teaching strategies to engage students at various levels of intellectual development is one of the significant challenges facing faculty. This challenge becomes more pronounced in the online realm as the amount of time faculty have with students is limited, there is a lack of face-to-face interaction, and many students have many other pressing concerns to handle. Trying to teach to every student, however, is a worthwhile endeavor despite, or perhaps, because of the challenges. As Dewey…

Over the past several months I have devoted a significant about of time and space within this forum to the topic of establishing a sense of community in the online classroom environment. Past subjects have included strategies toward developing an online community, engendering rapport within the online classroom, the benefits of community to both faculty and students, peer-to-peer learning strategies, et cetera. The reasoning behind the focus on developing an online community has been my belief…

Helping students develop a sense of belonging in the online classroom can be a difficult process. Online students frequently perceive a sense of isolation within the online classroom. This sense of disconnect can often stem from a lack of contact between the student and instructor and from other students, a lack of attachment to the class as a perceivable entity, and the inability to forge a meaningful online identity. Ren et al. (2012) noted customers who believe they lack attachment and…

Two of the significant challenges online faculty face are promoting critical thinking amongst our students and developing dialogue within the discussion forums. The online environment poses certain issues toward achieving both goals. We lack the face-to-face communication and repertoire often required to help students extend their thinking to the critical thinking realm, and the asynchronous modality of communications does not intrinsically promote in-depth and thoughtful dialogue. The ability…

One of the most important tasks an instructor has is to provide edifying and timely feedback to their students. Feedback is a cornerstone of instruction as it allows students to learn more about the material covered in a course, and integrate said material into future courses as well as in their professional endeavors. As much as instructors may enjoy providing positive feedback, the feedback process also entails that students receive negative or critical feedback. Providing less than positive…

I recently had an informal debate with a colleague regarding the effect technology has on critical thinking, namely our students' ability to critically think. This conservation evolved into one about technology and research. Specifically, the effect the technologies behind entities like Amanzon.com and Wikipedia have made concerning the ability of people to conduct research. My colleagues' position was such technologies have lessened people's ability to think critically and conduct thorough…