How Can I Keep Students Engaged with Instructor Presence?

This Magna 20-Minute Mentor video called How Can I Keep Students Engaged with Instructor Presence? is available now in an entire video series on engagement and creating community.

Explore the importance of faculty presence for student success in distance education. Learn how to analyze, evaluate, and improve your level of instructor presence in your courses. (Includes supplemental guides and transcript.)

Does the link not work? You must be logged into the Magna 20-Minute Mentor site in order to view it. Everyone who works for UAH has free access to the Magna 20-minute Mentor Series. It's easy to register to gain unfettered access to quick "bite sized" video mentoring that's easy to fit into any schedule! Learn how to register on the Online Learning Faculty Resource Site.

The OER Struggle

What do faculty do when they can't find the curriculum they need in the OER community? Some are creating their own! And this is no straight text e-textbook either. Take a peek!

Composition class is about reading and writing, but the iBook allows students with different learning styles to engage with the material, noted Jason LaMar, supervisor of instructional technology innovations in the Digital Education and Instructional Services division. "There are a lot of video clips and audio segments, as well as interactive pieces that are tactile," he added. "Tapping into all those learning styles was a huge benefit of the platform."

Nip it in the bud!

Not everyone is old enough to remember Barney Fife's repeated exclamations to "Nip it! Nip it in the bud!" when addressing various issues that face sheriffs and deputies. Most who aren't old enough have no doubt heard it from various sources over the years.

Purdue University is addressing the problem of students distracted by online viewing in classrooms in a novel approach. Purdue is throttling their bandwidth! Of course, this wouldn't prevent a student with an unlimited data plan on their phone from tapping into the streaming services, but it's an interesting traditional approach to the newer problems presented by mobile technologies.

Purdue University students who were hoping to sneak in an episode of Queer Eye during their economics lecture are out of luck. The university recently debuted a pilot program that restricts access to five popular streaming sites -- Netflix, Hulu, Steam, Apple Updates and iTunes -- during class time in four of its biggest lecture halls.