Teaching a larger class and managing enrollment

This semester I was asked if I was willing to teach a larger history class. Normally our history classes are capped at 45, but I can earn extra pay if I am willing to teach 70. The trick is the class has to reach that number, else my pay does not increase. So this class I hustled for students to enroll. I emailed the counselors asking for them to refer students, and I also emailed the other history instructors telling them to send students they could not accommodate my way. Before the cap was raised I already had a wait list of 18, so I would not have had to worry about finding students to enroll.

Email works for students

I am fortunate to be teaching a class on how to use a learning management system that has students and teachers enrolled. One of the discussion topics in the class encourages participants to share how they use the various communication tools available. I saw a quote from a student about email that grabbed my attention:

"When I get an email from a professor, I feel like inside there will be some important secret message that we all have to know in order to get through with class. While I pay attention to other forms of communication, emails definitely get my fullest attention."

YouTube and Webcam for instructor presence

I post a weekly video for my fully online classes to help establish instructor presence, which is one of those best practices for distance education. Initially I thought it would be tough to do but the use of a webcam and YouTube's easy basic editing tools make it a breeze. The caption tools in YouTube are especially useful for short videos, which include the ones I use. For longer videos, especially instructional ones (like the one embedded on this page), I use Camtasia Studio.

Discussion grades

A student expressed confusion when she saw her points for a discussion topic were 10/10 but I said that there could be 20 points per topic with a maximum of 80 for all discussion (8 topcis total). I replied:

Each of the 8 unit discussions is worth 10 points for a total of 80. I do not want to devalue the other assignments that make up the class grade, so I leave at 80 the maximum points that can be earned through discussion. However, I recognize that some students will find certain topics more interesting and I also want to encourage communication among students, so I award points for quality responses to what our classmates write. These are extra credit within that discussion topic with a maximum of 10 extra credit points, so the score for an individual topic can be up to 20/10. Therefore it is possible to earn all 80 of the discussion points possible in just 4 discussion topics.

Wording for Quizzes

I teach a professional development course and use quizzes to encourage reading and reinforce learning. Since my "students" are peers and at times feel uncomfortable with being graded, I like to set them at ease with some wording in the description of the quiz. The quizzes are set to allow unlimited attempts and each question's feedback shows where to find the correct answer.

The purpose of the quiz is for you to review some of the topics covered in this lesson to validate your understanding of its terms and tools. It is not meant to provoke anxiety but instead be a guide. Take the quiz as many times as you wish

GaGA Group Site

Our district has a Google Apps account, and last semester I used the Google Sites tool to conduct a group assignment. On the first day of the class I asked the students to pick which of the course questions most interested them, and I used this to divide them into groups. I created a site for each group and assigned the group's members as editors of the site.

Textbook experiment

For my history class this fall I am using flatworldknowledge.com to create a textbook for students that is free to read online. Students can purchase it in ebook, PDF, and hard copy if they wish. I liked the book well enough to use it and made a few changes, especially removing the chapters that cover time periods outside the scope of our class.

I hope that the decision to save students money will benefit them.