A word cloud is a collage of words, often displayed in interesting shapes, colors, and fonts.
To create a word cloud, simply type (or copy and paste) some text into a word cloud generator, such as Wordle. Whichever words are repeated most frequently within the text will be displayed larger and more prominently within the word cloud.
In recent years, educators have come up with numerous ways to use word clouds within their lesson plans.
Here are a few ideas…
Providing feedback on students’ work is a great opportunity to forge a personal connection with students in online courses.
Check out this infographic created by the UW-Stout E-Learning and Online Teaching Certificate Program for tips on how to write effective and personal evaluative comments.
For a fantastic guide to writing good discussion questions, take a look at the chart below from “Generating and Facilitating Engaging and Effective Online Discussions” from the University of Oregon’s Teaching Effectiveness Program.
For a resource of ideas for online educational activities, check out the Online Teaching Activity Index from the Illinois Online Network.
The website suggests 49 activities that can be used in either online or hybrid courses, including some creative activities such as Internet Scavenger Hunt, Concept Mapping, Fishbowl, and Socratic Dialogue.
Active learning is an engaging form of learning that involves higher-order thinking skills such as evaluation, synthesis, and analysis. It is much more effective than the passive learning that occurs when students simply listen to a lecture or watch a powerpoint presentation. When engaged in active learning, students are forced to process and apply the information that they learned.
Watch this video to understand how professors of online courses can create opportunities for active learning.
This well-developed presentation outlines 6 characteristics of effective online courses: access to technology, clear guidelines and procedures, participation, collaborative learning, transformative learning, assessment and evaluation. Six Characteristics of Effective Online Courses by Christopher T. Davis, Ph.D.
When enrolled in fully online degree programs, students miss out on key components of the college experience that are integral to their overall educational success.
In a recent article on GetEducated.com, Joe Henry points out 5 features of the college experience and explains how to incorporate those features into online degree programs to support student success.
When teaching a complex scientific concept, process, or mechanism, consider using an infographic. An infographic is an image containing visual representations of statistics, data, maps, or other information. Infographics are often easier to understand than reading long paragraphs of text.…
The following infographic depicts the when, where, why, and how of educational assessments. The Educational Assessment Landscape infographic was designed by Santosh Kushwaha and published by CTB/McGraw-Hill.
This Online Course Review Toolkit provides a checklist to help instructors evaluate their online courses and assess whether they are achieving their educational goals.