Higher education blog

Why don't students do their assigned readings? Many aren’t motivated to read through dense pages of information. eTextbooks have encouraged more students to read because of its interactivity and convenience.

But technology alone doesn't improve learning. Instructors play the most important role in encouraging students to read.

A 2015 Educause study looked at how an instructor’s use of eTexts affects student reading and learning. It found that 70% of students preferred eTexts over paper textbooks because of instructor highlights and annotations. This feature is just as important to them as the eText saving them money.

Black boxes on a video call. Silence after asking a question. An empty discussion board. Teaching online can make it difficult to see when students need extra help.

85% of students said the pandemic has negatively affected their grades and academic performance [1]. To prevent failing, how can you spot students falling behind and help them succeed online before it’s too late?

2020 proved to be a challenging year for educators, to say the least. Many instructors, however, rose to the challenge by bringing creative and collaborative teaching ideas into their online classrooms.

To celebrate all the good things that happened in a tough year, we asked instructors to share their successes from the fall 2020 semester.

Here are 4 trends describing what worked well for instructors:

1. Keeping it short

For a generation of students growing up on social media, instructors found that bite-sized activities kept them most engaged and attentive.

New year, new beginnings. Learning to be an online student was a challenge for many of you last semester. Mistakes were made and lessons were learned. With the winter semester just over the horizon, this is your chance for a fresh start by learning from the past.