ICT in Education

Thoughts on: Seven Principles of effective teaching: A practical lens for evaluating online courses (Graham, Cagiltay, Lim, Craner & Duffy 2001)

August 16, 2007

Graham, C., Cagiltay, K., Lim, B-R., Craner, J., & Duffy, T. M. (2001). Seven principles of effective teaching: A practical lens for evaluating online courses. The Technology Source Archives at the University of North Carolina: http://technologysource.org/article/seven_principles_of_effective_teaching/

This is one of the best guides to practical, across the board strategies for better online teaching I’ve ever seen.

It’s simple, doesn’t get bogged down in which philosophical approach beats which and offers clear guidelines for online best practice.

It’s based on a larger report available from http://crlt.indiana.edu/publications/crlt00-13.pdf

These are the key principles:

1. Instructors should provide clear guidelines for interaction with students. 

Establish policies describing the types of communication that should take place over different channels (e.g. send your technical support questions to FLS)

Set clear standards for instructors timelines for responding to messages (e.g. I will respond to emails on Tuesday and Friday afternoons)

2. Well designed discussion assignments facilitate meaningful cooperation among students

• Learners should be required to participate (and their grade should depend on participation)
• Discussion groups should remain small
• Discussions should be focussed on a task
• Tasks should always result in a product
• Tasks should engage learners in the content
• Learners should receive feedback on their discussions
• Evaluation should be based on the quality of the postings (not length or number)
• Instructors should post expectations for discussions

3. Students should present course projects

“Students presented case study solutions via the class website. The other students critiqued the solution and made further comments about the case. After all students had responded, the case presenter updated and reposted his or her solution, including new insights or conclusions gained from classmates. Only at the end of all the presentations did the instructor provide an overall reaction to the cases and specifically comment about issues the class identified or failed to identify. In this way, students learned from one another as well as from the instructor”

4. Instructors need to provide two types of feedback: information feedback and acknowledgement feedback. 

Acknowledgement feedback is simply a response that an assignment (or whatever) has been received.
As the semester gets busier and time is scarcer, this often drops off – maybe having a simple template to copy/paste or even an automated system might be helpful here. 

Information feedback is a fuller response to submitted content – “when constraints increase during the semester’s busiest times, instructors can still give prompt feedback on discussion assignments by responding to the class as a whole instead of to each individual student. In this way, instructors can address patterns and trends in the discussion without being overwhelmed by the amount of feedback to be given”

5. Online courses need deadlines

“Regularly distributed deadlines encourage students to spend time on tasks and help students with busy schedules avoid procrastination. They also provide a context for regular contact with the instructor and peers”
My personal experience makes me wonder if it might be useful to break assignment tasks down into a number of small milestone chunks with set deadlines – although these could be optional to avoid overloading the teacher – Perhaps the milestones could serve to provide learners with an indication of how long a part might take and whether they are on track or need to put in more time.

(Maybe this is something that learners should be able to do on their own but my personal experience is that I often forget about the breaking the task down into smaller parts/actions until afterwards)

Maybe some kind of personal tick box checklist

6. Challenging tasks, sample cases and praise for high quality work communicate high expectations

This is essentially about applying more relevant, more authentic, context oriented activities which offer higher levels of challenge.

It’s also about providing examples of past student work, “along with comments explaining why the examples are good”

7.Allowing students to choose project topics incorporates diverse views into online courses

“The instructor allowed students to research their own area of interest, instead of assigning particular issues… Instructors can provide guidelines to help students select topics relevant to the course while still allowing students to share their unique perspectives”

This seems largely about motivation but also about creating a more democratic learning environment.

Entry Filed under: 915, democratic, e-learning, education design, pedagogy. .