Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with approximately 300 faculty who have developed and taught their first online course. One of the concerns I frequently hear from instructors considering teaching online is that they will lose the interaction and sense of community they have with their students when they teach face-to-face. That doesn’t have to be the case; many online instructors successfully create a sense of community in their courses. There are a variety of definitions of community. Most include wording or phrases such as “having something in common,” “feelings of being connected,” “shared goals or aspirations,” and “regular interaction.” This article will explore seven strategies faculty can use to promote and increase community in the online environment.

Before outlining the case study that will illustrate how you can evaluate the learnability of online courses, I recap a few essential aspects from my previous article How To Predict And Measure The Learnability Of Online Courses.

Analytics go beyond tracking when students log in and allow instructors to respond quickly to problems before they impact student learning and performance.