Instructional Strategies

Introduction

There are many ways to engage students in the online environment. The instructor takes on the role of a facilitator, mentor, or coach. A "guide on the side" as the parlance goes. The students take on more responsibility for their own learning, therefore they need to be somewhat motivated, and they need to be informed of that. One important task of the instructor is to insure that the instruction is always clear and concise for activities.

There is a lot of information below, but it is information that you as an online instructor should be aware of. It will give you a framework within which to think about online teaching and learning.

Students need to reflect on their ability to take online classes. They need to be made aware of what online learning entails. The following survey prompts students to reflect on their ability to succeed in an online class. The following self-evaluation represents the types of questions students should ask themselves before they attempt an online course.

Self Evaluation for Potential Online Students

Research recommends that, when designing instruction, you should attempt to address different learning styles of students.

Learning Styles and the Online Environment

Robert Gagné, an educational psychologist, is known for his research into a systematic design and approach to instruction and teaching methods. In 1965, he published The Conditions of Learning. He also developed The Nine Events of Instruction. Though this was originally for face-to face instruction, it can be adapted for the online environment. What we get from this is a formula or approach to deliver instruction and to guide the learning process. Even if you have never heard of Gagné's nine events of instruction, most instructors intuitively employ some of them in their instructional design.

The nine events of instruction offer you a way to reflect on possible strategies to engage your students in a completely online environment; however, all nine events may not fit all instructional needs.

For Face-to-Face Instruction:

Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction: An Introduction

Adapted for Online Instruction:

Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction: Adapted for Online Instruction

This section will point you to resources on the Web for online teaching practice. Because the type of instruction varies between disciplines, you will need to review instructional strategies and reflect on which type best suites your course's needs. There are many resources on the Web for online instructional strategies. Below, you will find some starting points for resources.

Teaching/Learning Philosophies

Instructional Strategies for Online Courses

Online Teaching Activity Index

Alternatives to Online Lecture

Indirect Instruction

Online Instructional Strategies

Instructional Strategies and Pedagogy

Student Writing Journals

The Critical Thinking Community

It is quite possible to "lecture" in the online classroom using audio and video. Keep in mind, though that even in a face-to-face class, "Telling is not teaching, and listening is not learning." Lecture is simply giving foundational information. That is not a bad thing in itself. In the online environment, an audio lecture can be good for several reasons.

• It addresses different learning styles (audio/visual - majority of people!)
• It allows you to communicate more effectively by using voice inflections, etc.
• It allows the student to connect to you as a real person
• It frames the learning that is about to take place
• It can be used to connect present knowledge to forthcoming knowledge ("advance organizer")

PowerPoint with Audio

You can use existing PowerPoint Lectures to create audiovisual lectures for the Web. You can add audio to your PowerPoint, and then use a program called Impatica to convert it to a format that will "stream" across the Web. What you get is a slide show with audio. An example follows.

Dr. Donna Hodnicki, faculty in the School of Nursing, uses audiovisual PowerPoint slide shows in her online classes. She supplies her students with a copy of the PowerPoint presentation as a PDF handout also.

• Lecture: Hematopoetic Drugs - Anemias
• Lecture Handout (PDF)

Guidelines for Creating Audio Slide Shows

• Keep them less than 15 minutes when possible
• If they are longer than 15 minutes, chunk them into "parts"
• If you have multiple topics in one lecture, make them separate presentations
• Be concise in the lecture; get to the point
• Provide PowerPoint as handout or provide lecture outline
• Article from The Chronical of Higher Education to support these guidelines (Opens in new window.)

Portable Lectures for mp3 Players

The above scenario illustrates a way to deliver instruction via the Web, i.e., the student sits at a computer to listen to or watch a presentation. There are alternative ways to deliver audio presentations such that students can download the files and play them on any media device, such as iPod. The audio file that is downloaded is an mp3 file. Along with the audio file, the student could print out visuals (PowerPoint, others) to accompany the presentation. This allows the student to listen to a lecture away from the computer, say while commuting to and from work or wherever they desire.

Example of a Portable Lecture

Teaching Software Applications on the Web

If you teach software applications, you can create video tutorials for the software for the Web with a software application called Camtasia. There are two examples below. In the Examples, Dr. Barbara Price is demonstrating how to use Excel to create pivot tables and charts

Pivot Tables

Pivot Charts

Streaming Slideshow Lectures with Menus

Is desirable to allow the student to navigate through the slideshow to the exact points that they might want to revisit, especially if the presentation is quite long and not "chunked." Camtasia allows us to do that. In the following example, Dr. Risa Cohen discusses water conservation.

Water Conservsation Lecture

Interactive Simulations

You can create interactive scenario-based study aids that help students think through real life situations. The following is an example of how this might be used to train nursing students how to handle an angry patient. This presentation was created using Adobe Captivate.

Anger Intervention Strategies

Wimba LiveClassroom

Live classroom is a tool in GeorgiaVIEW that allows you to communicate orally and visually online to the class in real time.

Features of Live Classroom

• Instructor and students communicate orally across the Internet
• Instructor or student can present PowerPoint (or other) presentations to the class
• The class can be recorded and archived for future viewing/listening

This is great if your students agree to meet online at the same time, but it sort of defeats the purpose of the "anywhere, anytime" goal of online instruction. If you have students in drastically different time zones, this might be a problem. You need to discuss this with your students if you intend to use Live Classroom in your teaching.

Read more about LiveClassroom

Games as a Teaching Strategy

Georgia Southern University has a site license for a software program called StudyMate. StudyMate uses regular test questions to create games that students can use as a study tool. StudyMate is made by the same company as Respondus, the software used to create quizzes for GeorgiaVIEW. If you can use Respondus, you already know how to use StudyMate. If you wish to use StudyMate (or Respondus) Please contract the Center for Online Learning.

StudyMate Game Examples

Documentaries

Documentaries can be a good way to expose the students to a wide variety of field-based learning. You can find documentaries on the Web or you can create your own. (Georgia Southern has a service to put your audio/video presentation into your courses. There may be restrictions depending on copyright issues.)

Digital Documentaries

Demonstrations

Demonstrations are particularly useful to show procedures. You can find demonstrations on the Web, or you can create your own. (Georgia Southern has a service to put your audio/video presentation into your courses. There may be restrictions depending on copyright issues.)

Chemistry Video Collection from the Journal of Chemical Education

Services on Campus

If you are interested in using any of these techniques in your online class, contact the Center for Online Learning.

Discussions are currently the "meat and potato" of online teaching and learning. Discussions strategies can be used to engage the students in deep analysis and synthesis of topics. These strategies are outlined in another section of this site.

View Discussion Strategies

There are indirect ways to deliver instruction. Providing explicit instructions and guidelines helps to focus on the information you deem important. These strategies are outlined in another section of this site.

View Guiding the Learning Process

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