Best Practices in Online Teaching and Learning across Academic Disciplines

Online teaching and learning has surged in recent years, and faculty who normally teach in face-to-face settings are increasingly called upon to teach blended, hybrid, and fully online courses. Best Practices in Online Teaching and Learning across Academic Disciplines provides insights from experienced university teachers and scholars across multiple disciplines―including social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, mathematics, and professional programs such as nursing, education, and business administration―who share innovative practices, pedagogies, and instructional design techniques.

This work highlights and features effective, practical, innovative, and engaging best-practices and approaches in online teaching and instructional design that can assist university faculty members and teachers, course designers and developers, and administrators invested and involved in online education. Using a common theme and structure, each chapter is co-authored by faculty members possessing a wealth of experience and credentialing in online teaching and instructional design in the relevant discipline or sub-discipline. Chapters include best-practices, approaches, and techniques within the discipline as well as relevant, innovative, and specific tools and strategies that improve student engagement and outcomes.

The book will appeal to faculty members and administrators in higher education teaching or designing online courses or entire online curricula, as well as instructional design staff working with and training faculty. Readers will be especially interested to discover lessons about how contributors have successfully taught and designed courses in disciplines not typically associated with online learning, such as mathematics, composition/writing, drawing, "hard" sciences, and speech, among others.

Distributed for George Mason University Press

Ross C. Alexander is Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indiana University East and has fifteen years’ experience in online education as an instructor, faculty member, course developer, curriculum designer, and administrator.