Faculty Resources - English:

Tips for Hybrid and Online Courses

1. Make sure you've familiarized yourself with the resources available via the ITC. If you are developing a hybrid course, make sure that you've read the Hybrid Guidelines (get link). Assistance with Moodle is also available.
2. General Tips:
   
   1. Present students with a clear netiquette policy.  Although there are many useful statements on netiquette floating around, you may want to design a custom netiquette statement for your students and your particular course.    For instance, do you want students to use emoticons? Do you have certain style requirements (MLA/APA, etc.) for referencing outside sources?  Do you want students to use email acronyms (e.g., BTW for "by the way")?  Do you have a particular format for the subject line?  Do you expect that students address each other formally in their emails (e.g., "Ms." and "Mr.")? Here is an example of a useful template to help students respond to one another.
   2. The following are useful examples of the range of statements about Netiquette:
      
      • WSU's Netiquette for Nursing Students
      • Grossmont-Cuyamaca CC E-Mail & Netiquette Page
      • Lawrence Technological University's Netiquette Page
   3. Make sure that you include a statement about your rights as an instructor and your expectations for student civility, in addition to a Netiquette statement.  Below are two examples of statements to put on your syllabi.
   4. Civility Statement
   5. Faculty Rights Statement
3. Be sure to make your pedagogical practices clear.  Electronic classrooms by virtue of their modality present interesting challenges for teachers.  For instance, you might want to be very explicit about:
   
   1. Faculty presence/role in wikis, forums or blogs (How often?  What role? Random or systematic participation by faculty?  Graded?  Evaluated?)
   2. Your philosophy about feedback to students (to the student only?  To the entire class?)
4. Other resources for writing teachers of hybrid and online courses:
   
   1. Technorati, a search engine for blogs
   2. Creative Commons, tools for web-authoring
   3. Blogger, free blog pages for use with google
   4. WordPress, a publishing platform for use with blogging software
   5. Noodle Tools, a commercial site with a bibliography composer for both MLA & APA formatting ($60 for a teacher for one year).  Sandy Jensen has graciously offered a noodle tools tutorial to all who are interested. Please email: jensens@lanecc.edu
   6. LCC's Online Library Tutorial
   7. Writing Center, University of NC, Chapel Hill
   8. OWL at Purdue

For questions or comments about this page, please email: sullivank@lanecc.edu