Barbara Islas

Use of online professional development as well as collaborating with peers is important to further education. Change occurs frequently. As educators, we must be assessing, designing, developing, implementing, and evaluationg the teaching environment and content.

When communicating with students, it is important to frame the text in a clear and concise manner, checking for content, grammar, punctuation, and no possible misconstrued communication. 

Responses must be timely, alliowing for 24-48 hours from submission to reply, depending on business day. 

When communicating with students, one must be sure to communicate expectations of the course and how the students are graded. Students need timely feedback in a positive and constructive manner. 

Time management involves being organized by blocking out time for particular events and then being disciplined to stick to the schedule. This is an area that I struggle with. 

I let other things interfere and think I need to respond to student questions and emails quickly. In fact, I need to set up boundaries and communicate these to the students. Then, I can use flexible methods to communicate the content.

Part of good time management skills involves understanding what resources are available, including mentoring and technical support.

I find that my students value feedback from the instructors. They want to know what is important to know and how to apply what they know to real life situations.

Reply to Gulsebnem Bishop's post

You are so right. Clear communication is essential especially in an online environment. As we have seen over the past year, the method of teaching has been almost entirely sychronist or asynchonoist. Personally, I have learned to like certain aspects of the virtual environment but there are so many aspects of teaching live that the online environment cannot provide.

Reply to Alejandro Sevilla's post: This stuck out with me, as well. I feel that I use each of these styles at some point in my teaching.

With all that the internet has to offer, we, as educators, need to assess the objectives of the course as we choose the right tool to assist in achieving our outcomes. 

We will need to assess the student's ability and availability to the tools. We look at any potential problems that may occur and benefits to the use of certain technology tools. Once we choose the tool, we will need to assess, along the way, any barriers to learning by using the tools chosen and evaluate the results as we move forward.

Use multiple sources for learning what works and what doesn't work for the course. Revising the course must be evidence-based.