Teaching Online Simplified: A Quick Guide for Instructors (UM Press)

Book excerpt: The book “Teaching Online Simplified – A Quick Guide for Instructors” intended to serve as a practical guide or “handbook” for those who have limited or no prior knowledge in teaching and/or education but are interested in online teaching. It is also intended for: open university staff and lecturers who needs to teach online; lecturers who teach (or are planning to teach) online courses in higher education settings; lecturers who are interested to use technologies to support face-to-face teaching; and faculty professional development workshops and trainings. The book is written based on the authors’ research-based experiences in consulting online instructors on what they needed and wanted to know about designing online courses. Authors also interviewed a group of online students to understand what they liked and disliked about the way their current courses were conducted, and what kind of improvements they wanted their online programs to include. Hence, this book focusing on the “how” and “whys”, rather than theoretical discussions of teaching online. This book is a much-have resource for anyone involved in teaching online as it such as faculty members who want to convert his or her in-class course to an online format, and who are not necessarily familiar with current literature and/or do not have time to get acquainted with online teaching as it translates research-based knowledge in online education into simple strategies that can be easily adopted by teachers-practitioners.