Michelle Everson, an experienced online educator, shares insights gained from a decade of teaching, emphasizing that effective online course design requires more than just transferring classroom activities online. Key points include the importance of regular communication and feedback, the presence of the instructor, the use of varied tools, and the need for strategic time management. She also highlights the opportunities unique to online education while acknowledging ongoing challenges in student engagement and course structure.

1. Top Ten Things Learned From
Ten Years of Online Teaching
Michelle Everson
Department of Educational Psychology
gaddy001@umn.edu

2. A Little Bit About Me
• I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of
Educational Psychology (in the Quantitative
Methods in Education track/Statistics Education
program)
– I am also the current Editor of the Journal of Statistics Education
(JSE) and the program chair for the Electronic Conference on
Teaching Statistics (eCOTS)
• I have been teaching online since 2004
– I have helped develop and regularly teach four online courses:
• EPSY 3264: Basic and Applied Statistics
• EPSY 5261: Introductory Statistical Methods
• EPSY 5262: Intermediate Statistical Methods
• EPSY 5271: Becoming a Teacher of Statistics

3. Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in
Statistics Education (GAISE)
• We have worked hard to align our online courses with the
GAISE recommendations:
1. Emphasize statistical literacy and develop statistical thinking
2. Use real data
3. Stress conceptual understanding rather than mere knowledge of
procedures
4. Foster active learning in the classroom
5. Use technology for developing conceptual understanding and analyzing
data
6. Use assessments to improve and evaluate student learning
See the GAISE College Report for more details: http://www.amstat.org/education/gaise/

4. Organization

5. #10: Planning for and designing an
online course involves much more
than simply taking everything you
do in the classroom and putting it
online.

6. Some Things to Think About
• How will students learn from and interact with the material?
• How will students interact with each other and with the
instructor?
• How will you assess students?
• What type of classroom management system will you use and
what kind of support will you get for using it?
• How much time will it take students to get through different
assignments/activities?
– Assignments and activities can take more time online than they do in the
classroom (from both the student and instructor vantage points).
• How much of a time investment will it be for the instructor to
keep up with the class?
– If you can do a lot upfront to save yourself time during the
semester/quarter, you will be thankful later on!

7. #9: Students appreciate regular
communication and timely feedback
on their progress, choices about
what and how they learn, and an
organized classroom environment.

8. Communication and Feedback
• Students are told we will attempt to respond to
questions within 24 to 48 hours
• We make sure that there are multiple ways we can
connect with students (e.g., Skype, chat, telephone, in-
person meetings, etc.)
• We attempt to get assignments graded within a week
(or sooner if students need that feedback to move
forward)
– Our class sizes, at most, are between 45 and 50 students
– If we have more than 30 students in a section, we get support
from a teaching assistant
• Announcements are made each week to remind
students of important activities/deadlines

9. Choices
• Students in some of our courses have
choices about:
– The kind of statistical software they can learn
and use (e.g., R, SPSS, or StatCrunch)
– Topics that can be pursued for a course project
– When and how they will work with their peers
and complete online assignments
• In one course, students can even create
their own assignment

10. #8: Scavenger hunts and syllabus
quizzes are good things!

11. #7: Instructor presence is
important, and there are many ways
an instructor can be present in the
online environment.

12. • In our courses, we check in frequently with
student discussion groups and participate by:
– Cheering students on and letting them know if
they are on the right track
– Highlighting important points made during
discussion
– Questioning students about their understanding,
or asking students for clarification
– Attempting to correct
misconceptions/misunderstandings
– Providing direct instruction if students appear to
be struggling to understand material
– Sharing some of our own examples or experiences

13. #6: There are many great tools out
there to make our online courses
even better, and some of them are
even free!

14. A few examples
Jing: www.techsmith.com/jing.html
Screencast-O-Matic: http://www.screencast-o-
matic.com/
VideoANT: http://ant.umn.edu/
ShowMe: http://www.showme.com/

16. #5: Deadlines are very important,
and it’s helpful if they are consistent
from week to week.

17. #4: Teaching online is a lot of work,
and it’s important, as an instructor,
to budget your time wisely so you
do not get burned out.

18. #3: We have great opportunities in
the online environment that we
don’t always get in the classroom,
and we need to take advantage of
these opportunities.

19. #2: It can help if you share ideas,
collaborate, and commiserate about
the online teaching experience with
others. If you don’t have those
opportunities within your own
department, it’s always possible to
find others who share your passion
for online teaching.

20. http://teachonline.causeweb.org

21. #1: There is still a lot I don’t know
about online teaching, but I enjoy
being able to try new things and
experiment with different
tools/activities/assignments.

22. What I am still figuring out…
• What is the best way to GRADE a discussion assignment?
• How do you best deal with students who are rude or say
inappropriate things during discussion?
• How do you best structure assignments, activities, and
resources to accommodate students who may have disabilities?
• How do find that perfect balance so you are not online much
more than you need to be?
• How can you motivate the students who don’t seem to see any
benefits to discussing course content with their peers?
• How can we get students to attend to what they should be
attending to in the online course?

23. Thank you for being here today, and
please reach out if you would like to
talk more about online teaching:
gaddy001@umn.edu 