A Warm Welcome from your instructor

Welcome to this course!

My name is Anthony. I created this course to guide you through the processes of creating an online course. You are already an accomplished educator and have solid learning materials and teaching techniques for your area of expertise. However, you will find teaching online hard, especially if you try to replicate your face-to-face (F2F) course in an online environment. Sure, you can put presentations online and then schedule synchronous Zoom or BigBlueButton sessions that duplicate what you do in your classroom. However, most online teaching is not synchronous learning but asynchronous. Most online courses run on a weekly schedule during 7-15 weeks. Deadlines still apply as they would in your F2F class.

One tremendous challenge that you will face is how to connect with your students online. It is tempting to think that all you have to do is upload learning materials, and then your students will start learning. Instead, you need to provide them with a learning environment and then guide them through the process. Guiding them is not telling them what they need to know. Instead, you provide them with projects and opportunities to apply what they learn practically. Don't think of online learning as acquiring knowledge. You give them the information, and then they do something with it. Online learning is performance-based and active learning.

I look forward to working with you in this class!