Be present in the course
- Use the discussion forum, announcements and email to show students you are actively monitoring and facilitating their learning.
Communicate regularly with students.
- Create a schedule of your planned interactions with students.
- Send a “welcome announcement” & reassure students that the semester will go on
- Email students who are not participating
- Post announcements about course content and deadlines
- Remind students of resources and your own availability
Clearly set expectations
- List course expectations, grading policies, and due dates for students to organize their time.
- Make sure the syllabus and course information is consistent.
- Create rubrics or directions so that students will know how they will be graded and will have a way to identify quality of work.
- Award points, assess or integrate the activity into a participation grade if you want to make certain students complete an activity.
Design the learning experience to meet course objectives.
- Choose activities and assessments that match what you want students to be able to do. For example, if you want them to be able to communicate information in writing, a multiple choice test won’t match the outcome
- Use Bloom’s Verbs to make sure your objectives are measurable.
Encourage active learning
- The burden isn’t on you to create long lectures. Research shows students don’t watch long video lectures. Instead, plan for learning activities where students read, observe, reflect, and analyze.
Use Available Tools and Resources
- Blackboard has many built-in tools to improve learning for your students. Ask your Instructional Designer for more info or visit the IDC’s Faculty Resource page
- Contact EKU’s instructional design center to discuss specific ways your course can reach students.
Tools to Easily Access
- Screencast-O-Matic or Screencastify
- To present information from a PowerPoint or presentation. Use this to record while sharing your screen!
- Flipgrid
- Create an educator account using your EKU gmail.
- For easy face to face (uses video) course discussion using any device (phone, laptop, tablet)
- Watch this Flipgrid tutorial created by the IDC
- Microsoft Stream
- Free for all of EKU and it is supported by IT!
- Use your EKU credentials to log in.
- Great for providing quick accessibility using automatic video transcripts and closed captioning.
- Blackboard Collaborate
- Similar to using Zoom, but it is in your BB course. It is a simple, convenient, and reliable web conferencing solution built for education and training. Engage with the material and your instructor.
- Bb Collaborate: Overview (8 mins, interactive)
- Bb Collaborate: Starting the session, Screen Sharing, and Session Recording (4 minutes, interactive)
- Bb Collaborate: Student-Led Group Discussions via Breakout Groups (3 minutes, interactive)
- Bb Collaborate: Student Consultations and Assignment Feedback (3 minutes, interactive)
- Blackboard Help-Collaborate Ultra Help for Moderators (BB Collaborate help link with common issues and popular pages)
- Note: if you want to record sessions you MUST hit the record button at the beginning of the session and then select STOP recording at the end!
- PowerPoint Lectures
- Upload your lectures to One Drive to share a link. All EKU instructors haveaccess to One Drive with your EKU email. View theEKU IDC tutorials to see how you can add these to your courses.
- For more information on tools click here: Moving Instruction Online