When was the last time you went to a faculty meeting where "pending budget cuts" wasn't an agenda item? I can't even recall. Two years ago, we stopped purchasing letterhead in our department. We pay our administrative assistant--a 12 month, full-time position that lists a BA as a preferred qualification--under $22,000 a year. That's under... Continue Reading →
Why and How to “Handhold” in an Online Classroom–For Students’ Sake and Yours
This post is part of an ongoing series to help you prepare an online course thoughtfully but, if needed, quickly. If you begin at the beginning, I'll take you through the major decisions you need to make to launch a class as quickly as possible while still doing a great job. Today's post is about... Continue Reading →
Curbing Cheating Online: Understanding Why Students Cheat
This post is part of a series to help you design an online course quickly and effectively. If you begin at the beginning, you will already have build your syllabus, created your policies, and framed your online course. We're taking a small detour now to focus on how you can curb cheating in your classes.... Continue Reading →
Building Your Online Classroom Shell: Final Steps
If you’ve been following this series of posts about building an online course by design, you’ve framed your course, selected your materials, chosen your assignments, written your syllabus, established the frame of your online course, added your lessons, and added your activities. This post helps you add the final touches. Has it felt hard and... Continue Reading →
You Probably Don’t Know Your Students as Well as You Think You Do (and That’s Okay, but You Still Have to Design for Their Success)
Now, obviously, you know them better than I do, so listen in this blog post for what is useful to you and ignore the rest. And even if we teach at the same university, in the same program, you know them differently than I do. Even if we teach the exact same students, we know... Continue Reading →
A Strategy for Curbing Online Cheating: Test Banks
One of the nicest, if unintentional, compliments I received from a student was one who complained that “you can’t even Google answers for tests in Dr. Barrett-Fox’s classes.” The student was frustrated that, even though most questions on most of my exams for Intro to Soc are trule/false and multiple choice, the answers weren’t ones... Continue Reading →