Christina Fusch

In today's economy, with competing interests of making a living, spending time with family, and trying to develop a career through schooling, students are in a high pressure environment. And in college they are expected to expand their learning by thinking in ways that they are unaccustomed to. At times this can cause a lot of frustration, especially when having to remember 20+ different aspects of the assignment they have never had to deal with before, such as word requirements, deadlines, days to post, what to include, citations, objectivity, how to respond to classmates, and the list goes on. This… >>>

The discussion board is my favorite place in the class. It allows me to directly interact with my students and engage in critical contemplation. There is a lot I could say here so let me just highlight a couple discussion board tactics I like to take. Map of the Week: At the beginning of the week I like to post a couple reminders to get the students started. They often forget APA Citations, word requirements, or how best to respond to other students. I will also post a "How I would answer this question" to get them started on the… >>>

Hi Everyone! There is always a certain element of subjectivity when it comes to the discussion board and students often feel that they may not be getting their due credit. As a student I sometimes felt that my grade should have been higher based on the assignment instructions, but there was "the instructor is always right" philosophy at the university. Ironically, now that I am a student again, I often get myself in trouble for questioning a grade. :) I think the problem is that instructional design has taught me how to quantify even the most softest of the soft… >>>

Student Support: There are two specific elements to student support that I would like to highlight here. The first is that student support is regulation, that is rules and laws in place to protect the student's rights and the long held integrity of academia. Two examples of these are the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects students' grades and records and Plagiarism, which ensures the honesty and academic professionalism that should be awarded to every author. I would like to make an insert here about FERPA. Many of the colleges I have worked at require FERPA training,… >>>