James Dowdalls

I learned that i can personalize my written communication by using emoticons to express feelings, bracketing my thoughts to infer a shared personalized feeling, and self-disclosure to heighten a personal connection in my e-mail communications.

Adaptive Learning platforms can identify a student's weak points and make recommendations to help students enhance their knowledge, thus creating a more personalized learning experience.

Perhaps surprisingly, in 2010 the U.S. Department of Education found that on average, students in online learning environments performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.

A strong working alliance with the online student will greatly affect the retention of individual online students.

Developing a strong Working alliance with the individual online student involves early. frequent, and consistent interactions with students.

This includes making yourself available to students with contact information and hours of availablity, communication with the student at prescribed regular periods during the semester, and responding to students questions and comments in a timely manner

Online Instructors should be aware of their role as a facilitator in the Active Learning process and assist students in their progress toward becoming a critical thinker by giving guidelines, encouraging peer and instructor communication, and bringing different perspectives to the class.

I use many Powerpoint presentations in my online courses; I now know that there is an app called "Brainshark" that can help me to create voiceover recording for my Powerpoint presentations.

The instructor should explain clearley to the students how communication with them will be forthcoming, be it through announcements or e-mails, so that the students don't feel overwhelmed or "badgered" by the instructors constant attempts at communication with them. This should be done at the outset of the class, during the introduction.

Concerning Active Learning: the instructor becomes the course facilitator, not just the content lecturer, who guides the students through their educational journey. Educational games or role-playing activity could be a good way for students to grasp the course content, rather than just having a passive note-taking experience.

I learned that I must add closed captioning on any video or podcast that I use in my online course; I became aware of closed captioning software such as Media Acess Generator (MAGpie) or Annotation Edit, that can add subtitles to any video or podcast.

I learned that online instructors should become aware of the different Assistive Technology devices available so that they can then advise their students of the type of equipment or software that the student may need, but is not necessarily aware of.