Student Outcomes in Online Courses: When Does Class Size Matter?

This quantitative study investigated the relationship between class size and student outcomes (final grades and DFW rates) in online higher education courses offered by a large, 4 year public institution in the United States. The following class size cut-off points were used: 8-15 vs. 16 or more students, 8-30 vs. 31 or more students, 8-40 vs. 41 or more students, and 8-50 vs. 51 or more students. Course level data included average final grades and DFW rates for 391 online undergraduate courses taught during the years 2017 and 2018. Significant results suggest that students earned higher grades in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) and upper-division courses when online courses included 30 or fewer students. This suggests that it may be beneficial to limit certain kinds of courses to 30 students or fewer, as 30 students may be a tipping point where the benefits of smaller online classes wear off.

Teaching Emotional Intelligence Online: The Sociology of Discussion Boards

Student engagement in an online class has always been a challenge to faculty. We all know that online courses can be difficult for some students, and online discussions do not always turn out as planned. How do we maximize our online communication effectiveness? In a case study of an Emotional Intelligence course in a community college setting, we looked at this through a sociological lens and built on the perspective of socialization theories and conceptions to see students quickly become engaged in discussions with their classmates and openly share their concerns. Data was analyzed and lessons learned.

KISS: The Value of Simplicity in Online Education

Keeping diversity and inclusion in mind throughout the process of online course design and delivery can be daunting to instructors, course developers, and content creators. These concepts, along with access equity and legal compliance, can seem distant from the principal objective of content presentation and instruction. Recent public health circumstances resulted in much of higher education’s move to remote learning. This reveals the need for quality online education that seeks to remove barriers and create challenging and engaging opportunities for all learners. This article presents research-based and established best practices and universal standards to help educators create accessible, usable, and inclusive online learning environments in a way that simplifies the process, meets rigorous standards, and improves the experience for all learners.

Proposed Model for Inter-Institutional Collaboration on Instructional Design Projects

Instructional design requests are multi-faceted and complex, necessitating a broad skill set and efficacious problem-solving procedures. While individual instructional designers in higher education are effective in their work, partnering with designers from other higher education institutions allows them to leverage one another’s experiences, skills, and approaches to these complex design requests. There is much research regarding instructional design processes, but there is none that addresses inter-institutional collaborative efforts to address complicated instructional design requests from faculty and subject-matter experts. In this article, we review current trends and discussions of instructional design models and practices and applicable communication theories and practices. We then propose a model for cross-institutional collaboration based on instructional design, communication, and collaborative processes.

The Secret to being a Successful Online Instructor

The Secret to being a Successful Online Instructor

Simple Steps towards Equitable Online Courses

It is well-known that academic life can be very stressful for students. We are currently in the middle of a pandemic and living in a time of deep social reflection and transformation, which has brought a new level of stress to our students, who are experiencing it in different ways. This is impacting all learning environments, including online courses. Approaches for making online courses more inclusive have been discussed extensively, but we are still learning how to go about achieving equitable courses. This article will highlight lessons learned from teaching experiences and from listening to students, including the importance of observing and identifying the factors contributing to the increased stress that students in your online course may be facing. It will also discuss simple strategies to help all your students achieve academic success.

Creating Online Instruction that is Accessible, Usable, and Inclusive

As a consequence of the COVID19 pandemic, we have witnessed a swift movement of onsite and hybrid courses to fully online formats. This development has created an urgent need for the design and delivery of online content and engagement mechanisms that are equitable for all students. There is little evidence that many of these courses are accessible to, usable by, and inclusive of students with disabilities. The author of this article discusses challenges students with disabilities face in accessing online content and engaging in online activities as well as choices that instructors and online course designers can make with respect to pedagogy and information technology (IT) to ensure that their classes are accessible to, usable by, and inclusive of all students. She introduces for those new to this field the potential of the universal design (UD) framework to inform the design of online learning that addresses the needs of students with a wide range of characteristics.

A Study of Anecdotal Student Response to Virtual Art Museums in Online History Courses

This anecdotal pilot case study of practice addresses the question: How can technology be used to make online history courses more engaging with museums? Findings from this case study suggest that virtual art museums via the Google Cultural Institute (now Google Arts & Culture) were an effective way to encourage students to do more than the minimum required for the online forum response assignment in a survey (100-level) history course at a community college in the northwest United States. The instructor designed an assignment that was posted in the learning management system as a PDF. Implications for practice are that online instructors of history, as well as online instructors of humanities, can assign virtual art museum visits with an online discussion component to encourage student engagement centered on course content.