Uncommon Sense Teaching: Teaching Online

Go to Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/teaching-online

Introduction

**Course Review: Uncommon Sense Teaching: Teaching Online** In the rapidly evolving landscape of education, the shift from traditional to online teaching has posed numerous challenges for educators. Coursera’s course titled "Uncommon Sense Teaching: Teaching Online" addresses these challenges, providing innovative strategies and insights to enhance the online teaching experience. Developed by seasoned educators and researchers, this course is designed to revolutionize how instructors approach online learning, leveraging scientific research and practical techniques. ### Course Overview The course is structured around progressive modules that explore various dimensions of online teaching, focusing on both theoretical foundations and practical applications. It encourages educators to embrace fresh, evidence-based approaches that extend beyond conventional methods, creating a more engaging and effective online learning environment. ### Syllabus Breakdown 1. **Schemas, Motivation, and Teaching Online** The first week delves into schemas—mental frameworks that shape our understanding and identity. This module emphasizes the importance of motivation in online learning, suggesting that effective teaching can reshape student identities. By refraining from "checkbox" teaching methods, educators can foster a more meaningful learning experience that resonates with students on a personal level. 2. **Popcorn Time! Lessons from the Neuroscience of Movie Watching** In week two, the course draws on the fundamentals of filmmaking and neuroscience to explore effective online teaching strategies. It highlights how seemingly minor adjustments—such as camera angles, lighting, and sound quality—can significantly enhance student engagement. This module challenges educators to rethink the adaptability of traditional teaching techniques to the online realm, advocating for innovative practices based on insights from media consumption. 3. **Retrieval & Spaced Repetition in Online Learning** The third week focuses on retention strategies critical for today’s fast-paced learning environments. Here, participants learn about the power of retrieval and spaced repetition, alongside practical tools that facilitate deeper learning in less time. Through engaging metaphors and visual aids, the course provides techniques that help educators curate content for maximum retention and comprehension. 4. **Preparing Now and for the Future through Great Online Teaching** The final module emphasizes the unique advantages of online education, such as fostering creativity through varied attention strategies and encouraging peer interaction in large classrooms. It underscores the therapeutic benefits of learning and its capacity to promote resilience within communities. Educators are equipped with actionable insights to enhance their practices, ensuring their teaching methods remain effective as educational landscapes continue to evolve. ### Highlights and Recommendations "Uncommon Sense Teaching: Teaching Online" stands out for its innovative approach, combining scientific theories with practical teaching strategies. The engaging content, delivered through various multimedia formats, caters to different learning styles, making the material accessible and enjoyable. **Who Should Enroll:** This course is ideal for educators at all levels—whether you're an experienced online instructor seeking to refine your skills or a novice looking to gain foundational knowledge. It also benefits educational leaders, instructional designers, and anyone involved in the e-learning space. **Recommendation:** I wholeheartedly recommend this course to anyone involved in online education. The insights gained here are invaluable, offering not only theoretical understanding but also actionable strategies that can truly transform your approach to teaching. As education continues to navigate the challenges posed by digital platforms, this course equips educators with the tools needed to inspire, engage, and succeed in the online environment. In summary, if you're looking to enhance your online teaching capabilities and connect more effectively with your students, "Uncommon Sense Teaching: Teaching Online" is a must-enroll course on Coursera. Prepare to rethink, relearn, and rejuvenate your teaching methodology!

Syllabus

Schemas, Motivation, and Teaching Online

A major challenge in teaching—especially teaching online—is how to motivate your students. This week, we’ll introduce the concept of schemas—those frameworks in long-term memory that help form our very identities. As we’ll see, increasing our motivation can involve changing our identities—a process that good online teaching can spur. What is good online teaching? It’s teaching that avoids “checkbox” approaches that seem to satisfy all the requirements, but in reality, produce poor online learning experiences for students. There are many paths past these challenges—dive into the details with us in this week’s videos!

Habits form a surprisingly important role in our online teaching. This means we can learn of simple practices for good online teaching—yet ignore them when it comes time to actually implement them. But as we explore this week, there are ways around this challenge. We will also explore how slightly different camera settings and angles, lighting, and above all, sound quality, can have a surprisingly beneficial effect on our students. Finally, we’ll take a plunge into what movies can tell us about how to teach effectively online. As we will discover, theoretical techniques that can work well in traditional classrooms don’t necessarily transfer to the online world!

Today’s online learners have no time to waste. How can you ensure that students learn as deeply and well as possible, in minimal time? That’s the focus of this week’s videos. We’ll dive into specific popular applications that can enhance students’ ability to retain the material—and also help you see at a glance how well your students are understanding what you are teaching while you are teaching. Our octopus and flocks of birds will also be at hand as metaphors that can help us understand, in surprising ways, how key concepts come together in the brain. As we’ll see, online teaching can give us a great platform to encapsulate key concepts by turning them into tight events that are easier to retrieve.

One of the great features of the online environment is that it allows you to use simple attentional tricks that are virtually impossible to do in real life. And your friendly moving image on the screen can provide for a social partnership that becomes very real—and very encouraging—for students. This can happen even when you have classes so large that you don’t have the ability to interact individually with your students. But, perhaps surprisingly, attention isn’t ALWAYS important—creativity thrives when attention wanders. There are specific tricks in the online environment to encourage this. Learning also thrives when students can interact with one another—not only because of the exchange of mental models and of schemas, but also due to interaction with familiar faces who share eye gaze. As you’ll see, this gives us important insights related to online discussion forums. Finally, we will learn how learning itself changes the brain in therapeutic, uplifting ways. This means online teaching can provide resilience for societies through good times and bad. All this and more in our final week of Teaching Online!