Recent Posts

Supporting Neurodiverse Students Through Course Design

You’ve doubtless heard the expression “Great minds think alike,” but the reality is that great minds work in countless different ways. There is no “right”...

Hybrid Teaching: Best Practices

Overview At NC State, there are a number of course modalities offered, including in-person (aka face to face), hybrid (a mix of online and in-person...

Using Intelliboard Data to Improve Student Success

Overview Intelliboard is a powerful data visualization tool that gives you user-friendly reports about Moodle data. Intelliboard takes information about your online courses from Moodle...

HyFlex Teaching: Best Practices

Overview HyFlex courses are those that provide a multimodal approach to learning, combining online and in-person students within the same course (Beatty, 2019). The term...

Gamify Your Moodle Course

Gamification can be a great way to strengthen self-regulation and engagement

Cognitive Load Essentials for Effective Instructional Videos

An effective instructional video effectively communicates information and knowledge to its audience in a clear and engaging manner. There are several key elements that can...

Creating Student Learning Communities Online

Online courses offer great advantages, not the least of which is that they provide students flexibility in location and schedule of learning, thereby creating more...

Step-by-Step Online Course Creation Guide

This guide covers basic steps for creating an online course at NC State. The resources will help you incorporate some best practices and instructional design...

Overall Course Design

Do you need to create an online course? Are you looking to improve the design of your Moodle course? Check out these guides, resources, and...

Commonly Used Instructional Design Models

Instructional design (ID) models provide structure to learning goals. The models are based on various learning theories in the realms of behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism...

Current Virtual Reality Best Practices for the Classroom

Virtual Reality (VR) allows students to experience a world that does not have a physical form (Sapp, 2015b). This technology provides numerous learning benefits, including...

Active Learning

Active learning is an approach that engages students in the learning process, and is often thought of as an alternative to conventional lectures. Commonly accepted...

Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of...

Balancing Online Course Workload

In a recent survey of more than 1,000 higher education professionals, 50% said their job is more difficult than it was five years ago (Bart,...

Types of Assessment

How do I give an exam online? Will students be more likely to cheat? What makes for an effective assessment in the online learning environment?...

Best Practices for Group Work Evaluation

NC State students report that one of the ways faculty could improve online courses is through building in more student-to-student activities (DELTA, 2015). Benefits of...

Large Course Redesign Best Practices

Course Redesign (CR) involves the redesigning of whole courses to achieve better learning outcomes and accommodate enrollment growth. CR is much more extensive than simply...

Online Course Best Practices

There are numerous ways to teach an engaging, effective online course. By following basic best practices, instructors can optimize the online learning experience. There are...

Providing Effective Feedback

Instructor and peer feedback have a profound effect on the quality of student learning. When teaching online, it is important to foster both learner-instructor interaction...

Netiquette—Or Best Practices for Interacting Online

Netiquette is the term used to describe the special set of rules for online communication. Because students in the online learning environment are unable to...

Best Practices For Creating Learning Objectives

Learning objectives help to clarify the purpose of a course for both students and faculty. The learning objectives state what the learner is expected to...

Best Practices for Creating Multiple-Choice Questions

When teaching online, instructors often turn to multiple-choice quizzes and exams to assess student learning. This option provides many benefits, including instantaneous feedback to students...

Discussion Forum Best Practices

Discussion Forums play a key role in online learning. When used effectively, they can provide many learning benefits that do not always occur in the...