Did you know? Only 25% of students visit the library, but 8/10 turn to Wikipedia for their first source of research.
Wikipedia is an easy go-to site for information, but is the information on Wikipedia accurate? How do professors feel about students using Wikipedia for research? Take a look at this infographic from e-Learning infographics to find out more about the scope of Wikipedia and how students use Wikipedia for research.
Multiple-choice questions can often be confusing to students, leaving them scratching their heads, wondering what the professor intended to ask.
In online courses, misleading or ambiguous questions can be particularly frustrating, since professors are not standing by to answer questions while students take the test.
How can professors write multiple-choice questions that will be easy for students to understand?
Follow these 15 Do’s and Don’ts while writing your multiple-choice quizzes to ensure that your tests are effective, straightforward, and leave no room for confusion.
Do you ever feel like you’re drowning in a sea of information? Confused about how all the facts, concepts, and data relate to each other?
For all students, learning new information can be overwhelming. When you’re feeling confused, try creating a mind map to clarify the material. Mind maps are diagrams that visually represent how concepts are related to each other.
Here are 6 ways to use mind maps to boost your grades.
MOOCs are hot, but is the sizzle about to fizzle?
This infographic from TopCollegesOnline.org outlines the plusses and minuses of MOOCs, and highlights a surprising statistic about student success rates with MOOCs: According to this infographic, a whopping 93% of MOOC students fail their course!
Creating a mind map is a powerful way to organize your thoughts in a visual form. A mind map is similar to a flow chart, except that while flowcharts normally proceed in a linear top-to-bottom order, mind maps progress clockwise from the top, and feature radial structures branching out from one central node.
Mind maps show you the relationship between ideas, structuring the information in a way that clarifies what is the main idea and what are the peripheral details. They let you see see the overall picture.
It’s quite a challenge to convert a traditional classroom course to online format.
If you already have a set of PowerPoint slides prepared, how do you convert that into an e-learning course? You can’t just share the Powerpoint with your students and expect them to assimilate the information.
The following infographic from e-learning infographics lists 7 steps for converting powerpoint presentations into e-learning courses.
Looking for the latest news, tips, and best practices in online education for colleges and universities?
Here’s a list of 10 blogs to get you started.
New technologies are constantly evolving, offering fresh ways for teachers to ramp up their curriculum. But with so many new tech options available, it is difficult for teachers to stay abreast of new technologies and figure out how to best incorporate them into their teaching style.
The following infographic from e-Learning Infographics describes 7 key characteristics shared by all teachers who use technology effectively.
Explain Everything is a powerful iPad app that provides an interactive whiteboard for creating screencast presentations.
With the Explain Everything app, you can import documents, pictures, videos, sound files, or browser windows to your project, and then add drawings annotations, animations, or voiceover narrations. The final project can then be recorded and shared with other people.
Here are 4 examples of how instructors can use the Explain Everything App to provide feedback on student work.
If you want to offer students the flexibility of an online class while maintaining the personal connection of a face-to-face course, videoconference courses are a great solution.
Here are 7 best practices that we keep in mind when we set up our videoconference courses.
Pinterest, the social network that allows users to “pin” content to their online bulletin boards, can be used in a variety of ways in education. Take a look and try some of them yourself.
Instructional scaffolding (also known as educational scaffolding) refers to the process of supporting students as they work to achieve educational goals that they would be unable to accomplish on their own.
Just as construction workers add temporary scaffolding to buildings, teachers can use instructional scaffolding techniques to put temporary “props” in place as students “build up” their skills and knowledge. Eventually, once the student has been sufficiently trained, the scaffolding can gradually fade away and be removed.
Picture a teenager bent over a videogame, intent to master Level 99 and conquer the world. Contrast that image with the image of a student trying to master a long list of terms for his class in Anatomy & Physiology. Why is the former student so motivated, and the latter is itching to get away?
Game designers make use of certain elements and strategies that draw players into the game and motivate them to keep on playing.
Read on to find out 5 creative ways to incorporate gaming elements into your course.
Whether out of habit or by conscious choice, we all make use of various learning techniques when we attempt to store new information in our long-term memory. But not all study habits are created equal; some may be more effective than others, especially when you factor in the amount of time it takes to implement each one.
Researchers have recently characterized 10 learning techniques according to whether they provide high, moderate, or low utility, based on each technique’s relative efficacy, ease of use, and applicability to a broad range of learning situations.
Using flashcards is a popular way to learn new terms or a foreign language. By reviewing your set of of cards over and over again, the information becomes ingrained in your memory so you won’t forget it.
Here are 6 online flashcard-creation tools that let you create your own flashcards, or learn a pre-existing set of cards:
