DE Oracle @ UMUC

In the Summer 2009 session, a BEHS teacher and the EWC's senior adviser teamed up to provide students with a chance to publish their PowerPoint presentations on a UMUC student Web site funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

This article shares a professor's experience of applying cloud computing in a UMUC graduate course, specifically the use of Google Docs. It provides a background of the concept, describes how it was applied in the classroom, lists the advantages and disadvantage of the application and presents a number of best practices based on the experience.

This article discusses how instructors can use input from students to keep their materials fresh, interesting, and up-to-date.

Reflective learning journals are effective tools for allowing students to look back at their learning and relate it to their environment. The traditional approach to document these journals was on paper but, with the development of blogs, it has taken on a totally new dimension. This article looks at how reflective learning journals are being used in a graduate-level online class as well as the benefits and related best practices associated with online learning journals.

Engaging students is a challenge whether teaching online or face-to-face. In online classes that tend to be text-heavy, this task can be especially difficult. One way to overcome this hurdle is to design project-based learning (PBL) assignments. This article discusses the advantages of PBL assignments, best practices for designing and implementing them, and several examples and resources that can help generate assignment ideas.

Scholarship and publishing keep you active as a trained professional. These activities not only help your teaching and increase your visibility but also contribute to the greater good by expanding our societal knowledge.

It is important for all students--regardless of discipline--to present the content of their compositions clearly to their audience. This article details several strategies to assist faculty and students with the reduction of surface-feature errors, such as those related to grammar and punctuation, in students' compositions.

Faculty differ on the importance of specific aspects of writing. Despite discipline-specific differences, some psychology concepts from learning theory underlie the techniques used to teach effective writing. In this article, the learning theory concepts of reinforcement and shaping will be presented and applied to three teaching approaches that can be used in any discipline.

Times have changed. Changes in American companies have altered the mix of job search strategies and resume writing approaches that actually lead to jobs. However, most teachers are still using the "tried and true" strategies that no longer apply.

This article explores challenges associated with instructor comments on student papers and argues for comments that are interactive and usable. Includes specific teaching strategies.