Active Learning (15 mins)
Student-to-Faculty Interaction
Keeping students actively engaged with you, the content, and each other promotes student success. When students are observing, doing, communicating, and reflecting, they are actively working with concepts and people. We describe these activities as interactions. Interaction is at the center of the teaching and learning process. When we move that process online, the way in which students and faculty interact changes. As we re-think how we approach interaction online there are three main types of interaction to consider. While learning activities will differ depending on the content, context, tools, and people involved, there are some strategies that can be incorporated in almost any course to foster interaction.
Student<–>Faculty Interaction
Student-to-faculty interaction can include both formal direct instruction and more informal mentoring and support. Regular and substantive student-faculty interaction is required for courses to be classified as "online courses" and not "correspondence courses" by the US Department of Education and the Higher Learning Commission. Courses considered to be correspondence are not eligible for student loans and don't count toward full-time student status.
A few examples of student-faculty interaction include:
- providing feedback on assignments, learning journals, or other reflective activities
- participating in discussion forums or chats
- sending frequent announcements to summarize the previous week or describe the next week
- providing online or telephone office hours
- mentoring individual learners
- working with small groups of students assigned to help teach portions of the course (peer teaching)