College of Liberal Arts → A Cornerstone College Texas A&M University
Document Actions
  • Send this page to somebody
  • Print this page

Stage 2: Helping Faculty to Use the Technology to Make a Better Course

Electronic Lists

Syllabus (published on Tuesdays)
This announcement list publishes news stories in education technology focused on news, trends, and resources for higher education. To subscribe, select the "Free Magazine Subscription" box, and fill in the required information. 

  • TLT-SWG (2-3 times per week)
    This highly moderated electronic discussion group focuses on issues of teaching, learning, technology, and educational change in higher education. It is published in a digest format. 

  • WebCT TAMU

  • This Texas A&M list for WebCT users (unmoderated but light load) contains information about upgrades to WebCT, workshops, tips and assistance with WebCT.  Subscribe or review the archives without subscription.

Electronic Publications

  • The Australian Journal of Educational Technology (peer reviewed, annual online journal)
  • The Australian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) is a refereed journal publishing research and review articles in educational technology, instructional design, educational applications of computer technologies, educational telecommunications and related areas. AJET is supported by three scholarly associations.

  • Best Educational E-Practices (online monthly journal)
  • This is a monthly journal of best practices for teaching with technology produced by Project Eagle at St. Petersburg College in Florida.

  • Innovate: Journal of Online Education (bimonthly)
  • "Innovate is a bimonthly, peer-reviewed online periodical (ISSN 1552-3233) published by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University. The journal focuses on the creative use of information technology (IT) to enhance educational processes in academic, commercial, and governmental settings. Our basic assumption is that innovative uses of technology in one sector can inform innovative uses of technology in each of the other sectors." (About)

  • IEEE Journal of Educational Technology and Society(quarterly)Educational Technology & Society has academic articles on the issues affecting the developers of educational systems and educators who implement and manage such systems. 
  • First Monday (published the first Monday of each month)
    This is a peer-reviewed electronic journal about the Internet, which sometimes focuses on the issue of education. Academics and senior technologists serve as the editorial board. With recent articles (complete with references) titled “The Work of Education in the Age of E-College” and “Internet Teaching and the Administration of Knowledge,” First Monday is a thought-provoking resource.

Instruction

Instructional Technology Services at Texas A&M

This site offers information designed to help faculty members make effective use of technology in the classroom.

Teaching Online

From online assignments to full-blown distance education, here are all the basics with checklists, practical tips, and suggestions. If you read nothing else about computer-assisted instruction, read this faculty handbook (in .pdf format).

Facilitating Online Learning: A Primer

This document provides a structure for starting to teach online. It covers the skills and attitudes instructors and students should have, inducting students to an online learning environment, getting started, and keeping the momentum. The links to wellspring.isinj.com take a while to load, but they are very much worth your time.

Practical Strategies for Teaching Computer Mediated Classes

Eighteen higher education faculty members comment in writing to a target article by Brent Muirhead of the University of Phoenix Online.  The article and discussions are supported by faculty experiences, 30 references (some online), and many links to educational sites. Six enumerated lists of things you can do are presented in the text and comments. This is an incredible resource from IEEE's Educational Technology group.

Using Instructional Technology

This well-organized site covers everything from theories and philosophy to current research and best practices. Despite the name, this site is an incredible resource, even if you are not adding instructional technology to your course.

Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education

This resource reviews over 50 years of research on teaching and learning in college. Subsequent publications include the following:

Increasing Student Collaboration Online

These are strategies for increasing student learning with email lists without increasing your workload.

Getting Students to Participate Online

Texas A&M’s Dr. Bill Klemm’s advice about online collaboration, conferencing and listservs.  See particularly

Overviews and Examples of Strategies for Online Teaching

These are quick overviews of techniques for motivating, informing, coaching, and evaluating online. Although the layout looks simplistic, the links are full of practical ideas and methods.

Teaching at a Distance

This dissertation describes in non-technical language the components that successful instructors use to foster synchronous learning. The table of contents is a clickable map of the document.

WebCT Vista at Texas A&M University

WebCT Vista is a software package that can help you put your syllabus on the web, post notes and information for your classes, facilitate topic-based class discussions, and more without coding in HTML or worrying about managing an account on a server. The site lists both TAMU-specific resources, such as free faculty training and information about course conversion, and general resources, such as tutorials for instructors.

The Web

Do-it-yourself Creation of Internet Courses

Texas A&M’s Dr. Bill Klemm’s offers this “Lessons Learned” page.

Web Building

From the University of Texas Center for Instructional Technologies, this site describes web authoring, information design, instructional design, and more. While some of the information is only relevant to faculty at UT, the tutorials (basic and intermediate) and design tips (including accessibility) are applicable to all educators.

General Web Authoring Resource

This site is for professional web authors, designers, developers, and strategists. While the monthly articles may be of interest to you, the sections under “Tracks” on the left side menu have intermediate level tips and practices.

Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching

MERLOT is a free and open content resource for faculty and students in higher education. MERLOT allows for peer review of the sites, so you have a little better guide to what you might want to use. A search on “English Literature” brought up 14 pages, including an online writing guide, a site about Chaucer, a Shakespeare site (of course), and more.

Methods and Strategies

Offering ideas that go beyond just putting your course on the web, Dr. Badrul H. Khan lists 19 categorical ways to use the web for instruction, some with linked examples that other instructors have submitted.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

This is a searchable index of hundreds of education resources supported by the Department of Education. Start by typing the title of your course into the search function because the categorical lists are large and designed to appeal to K-12 educators even though a great deal of content is appropriate for college instruction. A search on “cognitive psychology” returned 10 pages, including cognitive psychology applied to intelligence analysis and extensive information about the language of thought hypothesis.

The WWW Virtual Library

These volumes of information indexed by discipline include links to journals, directories, discussion forums, sub-disciplines and fascinating information. The search engine is not very effective because much of the information resides on sites other than vlib.org, but the indexing is such that only a few clicks brings up content pages.

Web-based Training (WBT)

This is an excellent design resource for those going to the next level of web integration in their teaching. The WBT Primer covers almost every angle, and the site has links to many resources.