Although there’s some disagreement as to whether distance education is more susceptible to academic dishonesty than other forms of instruction, what isn't up for debate is the fact that for as long as there’s been exams, there’s been cheating on exams. The online environment simply opens up a different set of challenges that aren't typically seen in traditional face-to-face courses.

So much of what determines the overall success or failure of a course takes place well in advance of the first day of class. It’s the thoughtful contemplation of your vision for the course — from what you want your students to learn, to selecting the instructional activities, assignments, and materials that will fuel that learning, to determining how you will measure learning outcomes.

Think back to your first few years of teaching. If you’re like most educators, you probably made your share of mistakes. Maybe you were too strict … or not strict enough. Perhaps you were so absorbed delivering your course content that you didn’t realize half the class was completely lost. Or maybe you made assumptions about your students that later proved to be false. You’re not alone.

It’s been said that no one dreams of someday becoming an academic administrator. It’s a tough job that’s only gotten more challenging as budgets shrink, public scrutiny rises, and responsibilities continue to grow.

In today’s competitive online learning landscape, students have more options and higher expectations than ever before. Ensuring quality is not just important, it’s critical … and it requires constant vigilance. Simply having an online program is no longer good enough, if it ever was. So what are you doing to ensure the quality of online courses and programs at your institution?

The more time students spend as active participants in learning activities, the more they learn. Research has proven this strong correlation again and again. But that doesn’t make it any easier to achieve. As an instructor, the challenge lies in not only lighting that fire of student engagement, but keeping the fire burning when student apathy and boredom creep into your classroom.

Of the many lessons learned from the early years of distance education one of the most persistent to remain, and thankfully so, is the fact that you cannot simply pluck an instructor out of the classroom, plug him into an online course, and expect him to be effective in this new and challenging medium. Some learned this lesson the hard way, while others took a proactive approach to faculty training from the start.

A love of course content and a willingness to convey that enthusiasm to students is a vital component to effective teaching, but you also need to make sure the methods used to convey that knowledge are up to the task.

It happened seemingly overnight, but suddenly the education community is all a-Twitter. Or is it? That’s what Faculty Focus set out to learn when it launched in July 2009 a survey on the role of Twitter in higher education. The survey asked college and university faculty about their familiarity and use of the micro-blogging service, if any, as well as whether they expect their Twitter use to increase or decrease in the future.