Educational Pedagogy

Students who enroll in online degree programs may be concerned that they will miss out on the interaction that is found in traditional degree programs. However, these students still benefit from class discussions through online discussion boards, which allow them to create original posts about a course topic and respond to the posts of other students. This guide provides information on what students can expect when using an online discussion board, the etiquette to follow on these boards, and how professors grade the posts students make.

One potential culprit captured by the study: Faculty may lack the training necessary to take advantage of smaller class sizes, open classroom layouts and other strategies meant to reduce the reliance on conventional lecturing. Lectures did occur less often in smaller than larger classes, the study found, and open layouts did correlate with more student-centered learning. But about half of the courses with those advantages still featured more conventional lecturing than interactive or student-centered teaching styles.