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E-Learning and Instructional Support.

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Rochester , MI 48309-4479
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Online Learning's top 10 blog posts of 2020

Fri Jan 15, 2021 at 04:17 PM

Early in 2020, we began an Online Learning blog with the goal of providing useful information, telling the stories of those who find success in online learning and sharing resources that we find helpful. As we start 2021, we want to look back at the top ten blogs that were most viewed by our readers. 

New faculty eSpace offers place for collaboration

Before our COVID-19 closure and moving all of OU’s classes online, Kieran Matheison, associate professor of Management Information System at OU, began to build an online community for OU faculty to share ideas, encourage each other and collaborate to learn from one another. From that idea sprouted the OU Faculty Teaching Community eSpace. Read more about this eSpace and how you might benefit from it.

OU’s diversity advocate training program launched

In e-Learning and Instructional Support at Oakland University, instructional designers help our educators systematically design and develop their courses to provide their students with the most engaging, dynamic and robust online courses. However, their work goes beyond academic classes. Instructional designer Dr. Nic Bongers recently helped Dr. Cynthia Miree, interim associate provost, create an online platform for the Diversity Advocate Program. Learn more about the program and how the instructional designers can help OU faculty and staff reach the online audience. 

Oakland University professor shares online learning tips

As Oakland University faculty members and students adjusted to fully online learning, Phyllis White, a special lecturer in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance, offered useful tips for online learning--both for faculty and for students. She’s garnered the knowledge from her experience teaching online. She began teaching What’s on Your Playlist, fully online in 2008. Read our blog for all of her useful information

New self-paced online teaching workshop offered

Students weren’t the only people adjusting to online learning in the spring. Even faulty members had to learn how to make it work. Before March 11, Beth Talbert, special instructor in the Department of Communication and Journalism, hadn’t used Moodle much in her classes, but that was all about to change with the spread of the novel coronavirus. To help, she enrolled in e-Learning and Instructional Support’s new Self-Paced Online Teaching workshop and found it to be very useful. 

Online Learning Consortium workshops are free to faculty and staff

Oakland University is an institutional member of the OLC and eLIS purchases workshop passes to offer them to full- and part-time faculty at no cost. Not many people are aware that the passes are available. In this blog, Francine Guice, a special lecturer in the School of Business Administration,shares her experience participating in the workshops

5 tips for synchronous learning for faculty and students

While in asynchronous classes, students can participate in forums, complete assignments and take quizzes up until a due date, synchronous classes are different. The lectures are live and must be attended online in real-time through a video conferencing application. It sounds like it would be like the traditional classroom environment, just in front of a computer, but there are different considerations for making this mode of learning work. Christina Moore, virtual faculty developer for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, gave us tips for both students and faculty on how to maximize their synchronous learning experience

Oakland University instructor offers cultural competency tips

Holly Walker-Coté, a special lecturer of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages, focuses her work in cultural competency. She said the students at OU are of a generation that embraces diversity, and she provided a list of five things instructors can do to embrace diversity in their classes--whether online or face-to-face. 

Student offers advice to others learning online

Before Oakland University went to completely remote classes, a number of students were already taking classes online. One student, Kourtney Bolbat, shared how her experience as an online student allowed her to juggle homelife, four small children and her classes.  She offered tips for succeeding in an online environment

4 tips from a gamer for remote class and work

If anyone knows what it’s like to sit for hours and hours staring at a computer screen, it’s gamers, according to Oakland University’s Esports head coach Carl Leone. As a gamer and now a coach of gamers, Leone has tips and tricks for being in front of a screen all day, whether it’s to compete in a video game or take online classes. 

Professor presents synchronous learning tips at conference

Rebecca Vannest, an assistant professor in the Department of Counseling, has more than 15 years of field experience in counseling and considers group therapy as one of her specialties. Despite her class going online, she developed an innovative approach to teaching her students about group counseling to make sure the class was as educational and meaningful as holding it in person. She recently presented her methods at the Lilly Conference, a conference on teaching and learning.