Many people take it on faith that online education must be run through a learning management system (LMS) like Blackboard, Angel, etc. Those systems were originally designed to allow faculty to move their courses online without having to learn HTML coding. They provided all of the tools needed to deliver an online course in one package.

The previous blog post featured two quotes advocating reflection about teaching philosophy and teaching practice. The goal is to discover discrepancies (if there are any) between what one believes about teaching and how one teaches. The problem? It’s darn difficult to be objective about one’s teaching. We just have too much of ourselves invested in the endeavor to see clearly what we are doing and why. But we aren’t blind. We can see if we make a concerted effort. Let me suggest some ways of looking that might help us see what we may have missed or not seen clearly.

Instructors have a myriad of technological tools available to enhance online instruction, such as blogs, wikis, and streaming audio and video. I have been particularly interested in streaming audio and video to deliver course content in a dynamic mode that captures the energy of the traditional classroom presentation while taking advantage of the Web's functionality to combine text, audio, and images. However, given the significant time it takes to design and create a presentation for streaming over the Web, I have wondered whether the time commitment is justified by the learning benefit for students. Do bells and whistles enhance learning online?

Magna Publications, the leading provider of professional development resources for the higher education community, today issued a Call for Proposals for the 2011 Teaching Professor Conference to be held May 20-22 in Atlanta.

As a department head, I initiate or respond to seemingly endless phone calls, emails, and letters to and from almost every corner of the campus, the community, state agencies, etc. Our department's office coordinator is swamped by similar interactions. Our faculty members, while working mostly with students, also interact with many others each day. We must all be well-versed in the "who does what" and "how things get done" on our campus and beyond.

“Conscientious pedagogical reflection is necessary to produce a complete, well-developed teaching philosophy. The absence of pedagogical reflection can result in daily instruction that fails to reflect an instructor’s teaching philosophy or instructional belief system accurately. In particular, an underdeveloped teaching philosophy may translate into a teaching style full of inconsistencies, characterized by poorly coordinated and designed instruction.” (p. 182)

My class had just finished covering three chalkboards with a rather dazzling array of concept clusters, illustrations, and links among disparate ideas. Clearly, a lot of learning had been generated. As I picked up the eraser to clear the board, I mentioned it was too bad that Chelsea and Eric (who were absent) had missed this vibrant discussion.

Student learning outcomes assessment can be defined in a lot of different ways, but Lisa R. Shibley, PhD., assistant vice president for Institutional Assessment and Planning at Millersville University, has a favorite definition. It’s from Assessment Clear and Simple: A Practical Guide for Institutions, Departments, and General Education by Barbara E. Walvoord and states that student learning outcomes assessment is “the systematic collection of information about student learning, using time, knowledge, expertise, and resources available in order to inform decisions about how to improve learning.”

I was traveling again last week and dining by myself in a local restaurant. I had forgotten to bring something to read, but the restaurant, named the The Library, had stacks of old books decorating the short walls between different sections of the dining room. In the stack near my table I found Teacher Education in Transition, published in 1969. The book smelled as old as it looked.