Dr. Jiaming Sun, Sociology & Criminal Justice
Fundamental, Innovative, and Effective Use of Instructional Strategies in eCollege
I have been using eCollege to facilitate my teaching for both online courses and face-to-face courses (web-enhanced) for several years. I felt that, by using eCollege, its beneficial not only to the professor to organize course materials, incorporate multimedia tools, manage students learning, but also for students to engage in their study by doing online exercises, participating virtual discussions, and checking grades, etc.
My students’ feedback on about the unique feature of my courses are “everything was in order and was well prepared especially the PowerPoint provided for our benefit”; “rating each week”; “send reminders via email of due dates”; “a unique feature is the short videos in each week”; “knowing where I stand in the class by displaying percentile is probably what I like most about this course”; “timely response student’s email allowed me to accomplish my work successfully”; “very organized, easy to navigate”. eCollege has made all those things happen.
Some innovative and effective pedagogical approaches being used in my courses can be summarized as the following:
- Sending a welcome email with course website to every student enrolled a week prior to a new semester, so student can have the syllabus and other information about the course in mind before the semester begins. I think it makes students be aware of the new course and prepare for it. I feel it is a good beginning to students to prepare for engaging in comprehend and critique professional level scholarship.
- Web-enhancing via eCollege to every course I taught. I post weekly agenda, weekly quizzes and chapter readings; provide links to relevant video clips, websites; reserve readings and resources that are utilized for online or face to face courses’ exercise and assignments. I feel it is important to incorporate relevant technology into the classroom or online course wherever possible;
- Motivating students’ study by posting Distribution Points to Date, to promote students excelling academically in learning throughout the entire semester. In a distributions Points to Date, students’ ranks by specific day are shown in percentile. Students can see their own points in grade book and recognize their level of performance in class regularly.
- Receiving students’ feedback in weekly base (or unit-base for summer course) is used throughout semester. Such feedback is voluntary posting by any student and it is not for grading. It makes a good communication between students and professor. Students’ comments on lectures and assignment, work loading in each week (or unit) can be received regularly. Based on that, adjustment can be made.
Dr. Sun can be reached at Jiaming.Sun@tamuc.edu
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