I am currently playing with FeedbackFruits as a plugin in our LMS, Canvas, mainly because they offer social annotation features to documents and videos and I am super curious about those, and then I am generally very interested in asynchronous online teaching and learning and how to make it a joyful experience. So the FeedbackFruits-hosted […]
I have been thinking a lot about what platform to host our MOOC on and how that decision locks us into a lot of things, for example to certify completion of the course and with that requirements to use quizzes and peer-review, but also more generally the ways in which participants can interact, can navigate […]
I am still deep in my asynchronous online learning phase, and the paper by Yang et al. (2026), “Applying a Think-Pair-Share (TPS) Structure to Asynchronous Online Discussions (AODs): A Mixed Methods Study”, looked super interesting!
Several of the advantages of asynchronous learning really came through for me while watching a recording of the Centre for Online and Distance Education’s webinar on “the power of asynchronous learning” (watch on youtube). First — that I even had access to a recording of this seminar and had not just missed it because I […]
Encouraging active participation in class is often a goal since it is correlated with better learning outcomes, but that became a lot more difficult when teaching had to suddenly move online in 2020. But maybe not all about online teaching was bad, or at least not for everybody?
I was super excited to get the notification that a recording of the presentation “Accessibility and inclusion in digital learning” by Marie Leijon had been uploaded to our Learning Management System! When Marie presented in the LU “Accessibility Tuesday” series last year, she provoked a lot of thoughts in me — many about the room, […]
I am in the brainstorming phase of a super cool project where we are planning to collaborate on; giving an academic development course in two countries simultaneously, teaching both online with everybody, and in person at the two hubs. I have always liked the combination of online and in-person teaching!
This morning on the bus, I came across the article “Choreography and improvisation in hybrid teaching” by Lamb et al. (2025). I previously wrote about dance as a metaphor for how much work a teacher vs a student should put into learning, and I have been thinking a lot about how also the room influences […]
We often discuss teaching and learning formats, and now there is a nice study that compares face-to-face, synchronous online, and asynchronous online in the same introductory physics course: Both stated student preferences at the beginning of the semester, what they actually end up doing, and what they think benefits and pitfalls are. Very interesting!
When I was teaching the emergency “how to teach online” courses online during the pandemic, I used to refer to an article by Rapanta et al. (2020) a lot, where they talk about teaching, cognitive, and social presence, which I want to link to in another post I am working on. But either I cannot […]
How can we make learning from instructional videos more effective? Does it help to have the instructor visible so students feel more connected and are more motivated to follow? Can we include learning prompts to support learning? Yes to both! Continue reading for my summary of two articles on those topics!
This is the third part (part 1 here, part 2 here) of my notes on reading “small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes” by Darby & Lang (2019). Take it with a pinch of salt and go read the original book! These are just my two cents on the points that I find […]
This is the second part (part 1 here) of my notes on reading “small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes” by Darby & Lang (2019). Take it with a pinch of salt and go read the original book! These are just my two cents on the points that I find especially relevant […]
I absolutely loved reading the “small teaching” book by Lang (2021), so I was super excited to dig into the related “small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes” by Darby & Lang (2019), and it did not disappoint! I loved it (my only complaint: why didn’t they call it “Tiny Teaching”??? What […]
When we talk about fostering student sense of belonging, it is easiest to think about in-person interactions. However, a lot of our teaching these days is online, and in high-enrolment courses. What can we do then? Two elements are critical: Teacher presence and interactive course design. Lim, Arif and Farmer (2022) present a case study […]
In a workshop I led recently, a participant helped me gain a new perspective on an old method: the “lightning storm in the chat” (my best attempt at translating “Chatgewitter” to English. No idea what the name of the method is in English). The idea is simple: You ask a question, people type their responses […]
Recently, one topic seemed to emerge a lot in conversations I’ve been having: Students cheating, or the fear thereof. Cheating is “easier” when exams are written online and we don’t have students directly under our noses, and to instructors it feels like cheating has increased a lot (and maybe it has!). We’ve discussed all kinds […]
Just imagine you had written an article on “Student Satisfaction and Learning Outcomes in Asynchronous Online Lecture Videos”, like Choe et al. (2019) did. What excellent timing to inform teaching decisions all around the world! Choe et al. compare 8 different video styles (all of which can be watched as supplementary material to the article […]
My friend’s university recently decided that “excursion week” (a week in May during which there are no lectures or exercises or anything happening at university to make time for field courses during the semester) is cancelled this year. Which is, of course, not surprising given the current situation, but it isn’t cancelled as in “go […]
Nicole Podleschny & Mirjam Glessmer, 2015 In our recent workshop on “supporting self-organized learning with online media”, Nicole Podleschny and I came up with a morphological box to help plan online teaching units. The morphological box is basically a list of criteria that we thought might be relevant, and then we suggest different values for each of the criteria […]
— This post was written for “Teaching in the Academy” in Israel, where it was published in Hebrew! Link here. — Many times students fail to see the real-life relevance of what they are supposed to be learning at university. But there is an easy way to help them make the connection: Ask them to take […]
