Education Commons^™

Modeling And Encouraging Self-Care In Online Teacher Preparation: Lessons Learned During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Kathleen A. Boothe, Marla J. Lohmann

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

The COVID-19 pandemic had significant impacts for both teachers and students at all levels. Instructional delivery had to be modified to respond to the need for social distancing. Even courses that were already fully online required adaptations to accommodate the needs of university students during COVID. One of the biggest changes that the authors made to their teaching and to their students’ learning was that of modeling and encouraging self-care. This article summarizes what two university faculty changed in their instruction to help promote self-care, as well as what they are doing now to continue utilizing what they learned.

Emergency Remote Teaching Versus Planned Remote Teaching: Narrowing The Gap With Targeted Professional Development, Bonnie J. Covelli, Sudipta Roy

Higher Learning Research Communications

Objectives: This study reviews faculty members’ comfort level with remote teaching in the Fall 2020 semester to evaluate the effectiveness of the professional development workshops.

Method: Using survey research, we examined professional development activities and subsequent comfort level and ease of adjustment with remote teaching in Fall 2020.

Results: Following the training, faculty reported high planned usage of various online teaching tools and great comfort with using them. The data reveals some differences between part-time and full-time faculty members.

Conclusions: The experience gained in the emergency semester, combined with the targeted professional development workshops offered eased the stress of planned …

The Value Of Instructor Interactivity In The Online Classroom, Greg Lucas, Gary Cao, Shaunna Waltemeyer, B. Jean Mandernach, Helen G. Hammond

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

As the number of faculty teaching online continues to grow, so has the interest in and understanding of the role of instructor interaction in the online classroom. Online education provides a unique platform in which course design and teaching are independent factors. Understanding faculty and student perceptions about the shifting role of instructor interaction in the online classroom can provide insight on policies and procedures that can support student learning through student-instructor interaction. Participants included faculty and students responding to an anonymous online survey who indicated “online” as their primary mode of teaching. Three key “value” themes emerged as significantly …

It Does Not Need To Be Perfect! Two Teacher Educators’ Quest To Enhance Online Instruction With Videos, Elena Andrei, Mary Frances Buckley-Marudas

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

Two early career literacy and language teacher educators who have digital literacies at the core of their professional and scholarly pursuits share their quest to enhance their online instruction. The authors wanted to identify one new improvement for their online courses in an effort to engage the students and support a more connected learning community. The improvement was instructor-made videos. Once the first video was shared and posted, weekly peer support, the premises of “keeping it simple” and “it does not need to be perfect” seemed to be critical in the implementation of videos for the online instruction. The authors …

The Relative Influence Of Instructor Training On Student Perceptions Of Online Courses And Instruction, Mary Bowne, Melissa Wuellner, Lisa Madsen, Jessica R. Meendering, John Howard

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Online learning opportunities have greatly increased in past years. Various studies have examined online courses and instructor practices but have not examined students’ perceptions of their online courses and online instructors who were offered a voluntary online certification program. Students who took online courses at a Midwestern university completed a survey related to their perceptions of their individual online course and instructor. Results showed that instructors who were certified received higher, positive ratings than instructors who were not certified. The certification program utilizes a “faculty as student’ model, where faculty take courses from a student learner perspective, to provide experiential …