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Building a Learning Community Online by Chris Waters http://www.techlearning.com/story/showArticle.php?articleID=17301672
Comments by Victoria
This article is by a high school math teacher, who makes the point that developing a community of learners is more important in some fields than in others. Some fields, like math, lend themselves more to individual students relating directly to the material, and community building may detract or distract from learning. He acknowledges that there will be some students in almost any class, however, that benefit from group and pair work, blogs, wikis, personal pages, and other community building elements. Like in face-to-face teaching, "Differentiation in pedagogy is ideal as it pushes every student to the extent of his/her abilities."


Learning from Reflections - Issues in Building Quality Online Courses http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall63/deubel63.htm
Patricia Deubel, Ph.D.
Nova Southeastern University
Comments by Victoria
This is a well-researched article with about fifty references at the end. The author covers a range of topics from instructional design to assignments to building community to closure to teaching an online course that someone else designed. Deubel cites quantitative and qualitative research that has been done that gives some insight into what students tend to expect from online courses, and what causes attrition. The references seem to stop at 2003, so it is possible that things have changed since the research was done, as this is a field that is changing quickly. I liked the specifics on web design: "
Good web pages contain highly relevant material, are updated often, require minimal download time, are easy to navigate (Nielson, 1999), and are designed simply (Otto, 2002). Designers might benefit from the comprehensive research-based web design and usability guidelines of the National Cancer Institute (www.usability.gov/guidelines/) and The Web Design Group (www.htmlhelp.com)."


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