Improve Communication in Your Online Courses

Recently The Guru was featured in a Faculty Focus Email from Magna Publications.  Here is an excerpt:

Most online courses rely heavily on text-based communication, but given the vast array of audio and video tools now available to instructors and students alike, it's never been easier to enhance the media richness of the online classroom. However, just like with home improvement, you have to select the right tool for the job.

"The more complex the task, the more rich the media necessary to communicate," said Jill Schiefelbein, an online instructor at Arizona State University.

For example, if you want to remind students that their paper is due by 11:59 pm on Tuesday, then that's very straightforward and can be done with plain text. However, if you need to explain a difficult concept to your class, you may want to consider adding some graphics, or even audio and video elements to the instruction.

View the full article on Improving Communication in Your Online Classes.