I think it is great to let the student re-take the quizzes as many times as they need to get a perfect score. It will force them to take a closer look at the questions that they got wrong and find the correct answer. Also, sometimes in retaking the quiz they may get an answer wrong that they previously had gotten correct. Retaking the quiz forces them to reassess their answers.

Making sure that information is easy to understand, can be easily found, and everything kept to a uniform design is so crucial. The less time students have to spend "looking for" the information, the longer they can spend on learning the actual information. I have found that if the student cannot find what they are looking for, or they don't understand, they spend too much valuable time looking, asking questions, and getting frustrated. If they have a deadline, and so many students wait until the deadline is close, they will get frustrated and maybe not do as well on the assignment as they could have if only they could have found/understood the information sooner. Frustration, I think, is avoidable if the navigation is simple and the information can be easily found.

Animation can be an exciting way to engage learners with your content. From my experience as an instructor, even the most simplistic animations can serve as a helpful visual aid.

As an online instructor, it is important to be available to students whenever they contact you. I try my best to respond to all student emails within 24 hours. Many students have busy lives and it is essential for us to be available when they require our help.

Taking the quiz for this section reminded me of how ambiguous test questions can be. There were multiple answers to one question, no specific directions.

We all have different ways in which we learn. On-line education works well with every "learning style" if the instructor uses ways to incorporate various ways of learning into the instructional part of the class. Examples of each learning style is important. Students that are visual or audio type learners may benefit from such web links as You Tube or the OIG HEAT clips regarding Fraud, Waste and Abuse.

The weekly Road Map should break down the syllabus into weekly portions. The goals of the class syllabus will be restated each week in the weekly Road Map. Re-messaging in the weekly Road Map will help the student to realize that the Syllabus is the "broader" (ie. Macro) picture and the Road Map is the weekly picture of what must be accomplished (i.e. Micro.)

Add resource web links for students to use in the discussions. The websites add validity to your thought process and gives the student another way to validate what the instructor is trying to get across to the student. Such websites might be career related (i.e AAPC or AHIMA) or geared toward rules and regulations such as CMS. New industry trends can be communicated with web links as well , such as with ICD 10.

How do you feel about students who purchase papers for their discussion boards? Are there any solutions to "know" that they've done so?

My question and what I have run into with my students is that many of my students don't have a grasp of technology and they aren't able to adapt. They have problems with submitting assignments, etc. and this seems to really hinder their learning that should be taking place. What have people don't to overcome this?

I think the most important thing about online courses is to make sure that they are well organized and concise. They need to be easy to navigate through and easy to understand.

I would like to get feedback on what everyone does for their students who struggle with technology, at the school where I teach, often I will have an online conference with students and they can't figure out how to login, submitting assignments gets difficult, etc. What does everyone suggest for this?

I enjoyed this section of the course because I liked how it covered that online courses need to be simple to navigate, they need to have interaction in the courses, and they need to be intellectual where the students can learn from them, even if they aren't in the classroom. I think that the instructor is key to the success of the online classroom.

when creatingng the threaded discussions what are your feelings regarding having two topics and the students having to post a minimum of three posts for each topic and posting on different days?

A simple definition pinched from Wikipedia: In education, realia (pronunciation reel-ee-ah) are objects from real life used in classroom instruction by educators to improve students' understanding of other cultures and real life situations. Where we discuss the importance of delivery technologies in an online environment - and the goal of increasing the quality of media and increasing the level of interaction to increase learning - the use of realia in online course is a critical component. Striking at the heart of electronic page-turners (click, read, click Next), I think we must strive to incorporate as much realism and authenticity in online content as we can. The use of a cartoon narrator that reads the screen is a step (a small step); a video overlay of a credible human being doing the narrating is a larger, more effective step. Ultimately, the realia should be created and shared by the online students themselves, since that is likely to be a more effective method of: 1. focusing attention 2. stimulating memory encoding 3. increasing retention 4. interacting intellectually.

The tech world is constantly shifting, what do we decide to go with as online instructors and why?

Online course evaluation should be an ongoing thing. Having Peers evaluate it is always beneficial.

It's best to correlate the in-seat version and online course together, and yes, there can be group projects. My wife has done some online, as have I. They're certainly doable!

All assignments must map to the Learning Objectives, but one thing that wasn't mentioned is that learning objectives map to the Course Description.

You must create your course that is extremely comparable to the in-seat version.