Do you have a fear of teaching an online course? Do you think that your personality will not shine through on the web? Has this stopped you from teaching online in the past? If you answered yes to one or all of these questions then you need to know that there is nothing to fear. Teaching online does not mean that you have to lose the personal touch with your students.

Last year I received a grant to support bringing guest scholars to my class. The idea was to find students with some expertise relevant to my courses and invite them to present in class, thereby giving the class a perspective on the material that I couldn’t provide. The grant enabled me to pay the guest scholars a stipend for their work. I had both the guest scholars and students complete questionnaires after these visits to class.

Here’s a list of some practical suggestions taken from a neat, “miniature guide for those who teach on how to improve student learning.” (reference below) The guide was prepared by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, both well-known experts on critical thinking.

I was home last week, visiting my 98-year-old father. He was doing well until February of this year. Since then he’s seriously declined physically and mentally. The mental changes are the hardest to take. Things he’s known for years are gone or only there intermittently. The confusion shakes his confidence. He thinks it’s morning but he’s never quite sure, and for some reason looking out the window doesn’t resolve his doubts. Numbers are now mostly a mystery. He called to tell us he’d just received a check for $2,100. He was right about receiving a check, but it was for $72—the $2,100 was the premium amount. I replaced his broken watch band with one just a bit different than his old one. Mastering how it worked took most of one afternoon.

One of the common objections to group work is that bright, capable students are held back when they share group activities and grades with students of lesser ability. This is of concern to teachers and students. Often very good students strongly oppose group work. They worry that an ineffective group with weak or nonproductive members will compromise their grades. Many openly express the belief that they can do the activity, project, paper, or presentation better on their own and would prefer doing it that way.

Everyone seems to assume that a presentation must be accompanied by a PowerPoint. Conferences even require presenters to submit their PowerPoints as a condition of being accepted. But we’ve all seen terrible PowerPoints that detract from the presentation, and many people just don’t use PowerPoints well, hence the term “PowerPoint-induced sleep.”

Should students have a role in developing the syllabus for a course? Yes, say 69 percent of a cohort of nursing faculty and 65 percent of a cohort of nursing students. And 92 percent of that faculty group said they did involve students in syllabus development. However, only 12 percent of the students said that they had been given a role in setting up the course syllabus.

If you have taken online courses, you have likely gained some valuable insights into what to do and what not to do as an online instructor. If you have never been an online learner, here are some lessons learned from Anna Brown, a learning technology specialist enrolled in a hybrid doctoral program in learning technologies.

As the new department chair, you are pleased when a graduate student comes to you to discuss her career. That pleasure fades, however, when you find that the conversation is not about choosing between job offers, but about a consensual affair she says she has been having with a faculty member up for tenure. The student says she had been trying to end the affair, but the faculty member has resisted, even threatening to delay her degree. Although she says she has talked to every member of her committee as well as the student advocate, she refuses to file a formal complaint or let her name be used for fear it will damage her career. However, she suggests to you that the faculty member does not deserve tenure.