Product Description

As online courses proliferate, teachers increasingly realize that they have to connect with their students as they would in face-to-face classes. They have to provide true opportunities for inspirational and meaningful learning, rather than a sterile experience of clicking within a labyrinth of links.

With the specific purpose of switching emphasis from the technical issues of online teaching to the human implications of teaching and learning through the Internet, Tisha Bender draws on her extensive research, her training of online faculty, and her own online teaching experience, to create a fresh vision of online pedagogy. Discussion-Based Online Teaching to Enhance Student Learning consists of three parts:

Theory

Practice

Assessment

The author shows how she applies learning theories to online discussion-based courses. She presents a wealth of suggestions and techniques, illustrated by real examples, for stimulating and managing online discussion effectively, and for improving teaching practices. The book concludes with methods for assessing the efficacy of online courses.

This accessible and comprehensive book offers an engaging and practical approach to online teaching that is rooted in the author's experience and enthusiasm for creating a virtual environment that involves students and fosters deep learning.

This is a book for all educators and administrators in higher education, in any discipline, engaged in, or contemplating offering, online classes that involve discussion or collaborative learning. It is relevant both to faculty teaching a hybrid class (a class taught on campus that also has an online component) and courses that are taught entirely online.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56555 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 206 pages

Review
"Anyone who needs to understand the components of teaching online will benefit from this book." -- Zane L. Berge, Department of Education, UMBC, Baltimore, and author of

"Dr. Bender provides a timely, provocative and intelligent vehicle for considering deep questions about online teaching." -- Diane Grodney, Clinical Associate Professor, New York University

"[Bender] is a teachers' teacher who carries us beyond 'click-happy techies,' into the deep waters of learning itself." -- Kathleen Hull, Adj. Assoc. Prof. of the Humanities, New York University

About the Author
Tisha Bender is an Online Faculty Development Consultant, who has extensively trained online faculty at New York University, the SUNY Learning Network, New School Online University and Cornell University-ILR Extension, and is also an online instructor at Cornell and the New School.

Customer Reviews

Getting Beyond the Technology to Constructivist Learning
Dr. Bender offers a well balanced view of online discussion as a teaching tool in asynchronous education. Clear, concise, practical and well documented concepts and applications fill this easily read textbook. The last section of the book provides a wonderful overview of the hot buttons on assessment in the online environment. Regardless of whether you are already implementing online discussion or if you are just considering online discussion as a new tool to add to your arsenal, you will find helpful insight in this book.

Best of it's subject
I am an instructional designer of online learning and in an effort to implement discussions in the courses I create, I ordered four books on discussion-based online learning. This book was by far the most comprehensive, balanced, and useful book of the four. While reading the book, I was immediately able to implement the strategies outlined in the book, and justify my reasons for implementing groups/discussions to the college instructors teaching the courses I create. I think that this book is valuable to anyone creating and supporting online learning: instructors, professors, instructional designers, trainers, and training managers. I even copied several pages of the book that justify online learning as a whole for my director.

Nice Resource
Well written with several great references. Does try to "defend" online teaching a little more than I would like, but it's still a nice resource and it covers several necessary points.