Pauletta's Best Practices for online course

1. Communicate with your students.  It is important to have an open line of communication between you and your students (weekly).  By keeping in contact with your students, you can help them feel engaged and part of an online class community.  Without this open line of communication, student can feel isolated and alone.

2. Have active discussions, assignments, and lectures.  By emphasizing more than take a test and turn in an assignment, your students are actively participating each week the key concepts of the course. You want to engage all different learning styles in your course.  Some students are read learners, others maybe lecture only and others maybe visual learners and others may be kinesthetic (doers) learners.

3. Organize class content on your CMS.  There is nothing more frustrating to your student when they log in and they do not see any content or they only see exams and assignments.  You want your class to be a dynamic learning environment. The key is be consistent within your course. E.g. welcome your students, post announcements, email students, discussion forums, pod cast lectures, YouTube videos, written lectures, upload content, pictures, slides, provide clear directions and guide your students through the semester.  All this leads towards student retention and student success.

4. Grade your students work in a timely manner as well as provide feedback to your students submitted assignments.  Students want to know how they are doing as well in the class.

5. Set rubrics for your class discussions and assignments.  Students want to know what they need to do to accomplish a given assignment or discussion.  What grade can they expect to receive with the work they turn in.  Rubrics really help students understand what they need to do to receive full points or grade with each assignment and discussion.