Helping eLearners Succeed

  • 07/01/07

The best ways to offer content, resource, and study strategy support to online learners

Frank ChristFrank Christ is professor emeritus at California State University-Long Beach, where he founded an award winning learning assistance support system. He also is the co-developer and content editor of Learning Support Centers in Higher Education (LSCHE, a free web portal for learning support center resources. And he is the author of several publications on learning skills, including 100 Things Every Online Student Ought to Know (Cambridge Stratford Publishing, 2007). Christ has delivered online graduate courses on teaching and facilitating college-level learning skills, and at professional conferences he has presented many faculty workshops about support for online students. Here, he identifies the Top 10 things you can do to help your online students

Want to be considered for Campus Technology's Top 10? Send your countdown and a brief background/bio summary to [email protected]

10

Find and link students to academic support services they might not be aware of on your own campus.

  • Help students discover the wealth of academic support your campus may offer: tutoring, internet help, test preparation, writing workshops, and more.
  • Remember, instructors are the main connection between students and the academic assistance they need to succeed in their courses.
9

Provide selected links to the many excellent resources on the web.

  • At www.studygs.net, 120 study guides are available for various learning areas.
  • Check out www.howtostudy.org, a good community college resource with many content study strategy guides.
  • Conduct a Google search; it’s easy to find more!
8

Recommend or require ancillary texts for student support.

  • A few study skills texts have been published that address online learning; do a Google search for “online student skills,” to select among online and print resources.
7

Invite campus learning assistance specialists to spend some time in your course.

  • Create discussion forums for virtual experts such as learning skills specialists, content tutors, librarians, or writing specialists.
6

Offer performance tips to students as ‘just-in-time’ interventions.

  • You can send a performance tip to alert one or all of your students to specific content or skills problems.
5

Leverage advice from former students, as introductory information to your course.

  • At the end of each course, ask your students what they think new students in your course should know.
  • Develop a list of past student advice that you can pass on to new students.
4

Create a ‘Learner Support’ button in your course management system (CMS).

  • A button labeled “Learner Support” or “Help With Online Learning” will help students easily access the support they need.
3

Place all student support information in your course syllabus.

  • Mention the learning support button in your CMS and describe its contents and any special links that you have added.
2

Keep up with the latest materials for online learners.

  • Be a frequent visitor to sites like LSCHE, a free web portal containing materials for support of online students.
1

Support the support!

  • Find, use, and share with colleagues the justification for integrating learner support in all online courses.

Featured

  • Three cubes of noticeably increasing sizes are arranged in a straight row on a subtle abstract background

    A Sense of Scale

    Gardner Campbell explores the notion of scale in education and shares some of his own experience "playing with scale" — scaling up and/or scaling down — in an English course at VCU.

  • AI-inspired background pattern with geometric shapes and fine lines in muted blue and gray on a dark background

    IBM Releases Granite 3.0 Family of Advanced AI Models

    IBM has introduced its most advanced family of AI models to date, Granite 3.0, at its annual TechXchange event. The new models were developed to provide a combination of performance, flexibility, and autonomy that outperforms or matches similarly sized models from leading providers on a range of benchmarks.

  • minimalist bookcase filled with textbooks featuring vibrant, solid-colored spines with no text, and a prominent number "25" displayed on one of the shelves

    OpenStax Celebrates 25th Anniversary

    OpenStax is celebrating its 25th anniversary as 2024 comes to a close. The open educational resources initiative from Rice University has served almost 37 million students in 153 countries and saved students nearly $3 billion in course material costs since its launch in 1999.

  • a professional worker in business casual attire interacting with a large screen displaying a generative AI interface in a modern office

    Study: Generative AI Could Inhibit Critical Thinking

    A new study on how knowledge workers engage in critical thinking found that workers with higher confidence in generative AI technology tend to employ less critical thinking to AI-generated outputs than workers with higher confidence in personal skills.