best practices

Best Practices for Large-Enrollment Online Courses, Part I: Managing student expectations, leveraging quizzes, and reducing grading load

By: EdPlus Digital Learning Team

April 30, 2025

Whenever student enrollment capacity dramatically increases for an instructor, there are a number of common questions and concerns: How will the increased grading load be managed? How can instructors facilitate a discussion among 100+ students? ...

A Brief Guide to Producing Videos from Your Home or Office

By: EdPlus Digital Learning Team

April 30, 2025

Written by Jessica Cole and Robert Behnke.The benefits of instructor-created video in online courses include increased student engagement and learning, increased instructor presence, and a greater student-to-instructor connection.[1-3] If you teach o ...

Best Practices for Large-Enrollment Online Courses, Part 2: Managing groups, peer review, and other peer-to-peer interactions

By: EdPlus Digital Learning Team

April 30, 2025

Whenever student enrollment capacity dramatically increases for an instructor, there are a number of common questions and concerns: How will instructors manage increased grading load? How can instructors facilitate a discussion among 100+ stude ...

Best Practices for Designing Effective Rubrics

By: EdPlus Digital Learning Team

April 30, 2025

Rubrics: A DefinitionRubrics have become a highly touted and ubiquitous tool in the proverbial assessment toolbox of higher education instructors. Rubrics can provide a wide range of benefits, from providing consistent feedback to students to decreas ...

Best Practices for Designing Effective Rubrics

By: EdPlus Digital Learning Team

February 8, 2019

By Philip Arcuria & Maryrose ChaabanRubrics: A DefinitionRubrics have become a highly touted and ubiquitous tool in the proverbial assessment toolbox of higher education instructors. Rubrics can provide a wide range of benefits, from providing co ...

Best Practices for Teaching Online

By: EdPlus Digital Learning Team

September 10, 2018

By Andrew Salcido and Jessica ColeOne of the most common questions an Instructional Designer is faced with is, “How can I enhance the student experience in my online course?” Often times, instructors wish to replicate the activities they do in face-t ...

9 Proven Ways for Instructors to Address Online Student Retention

By: EdPlus Digital Learning Team

August 18, 2018

With accessibility to online education increasing, the retention of online students has become a concern of academic leaders in higher education (Allen & Seaman, 2015). As a result, many universities have launched initiatives to improve course co ...

Cheaters Never Prosper

By: EdPlus Digital Learning Team

August 26, 2015

This post was updated on October 10, 2019.“How do you prevent cheating in online courses?” Since 1995, when the ASU Online instructional design team first started working with faculty to develop online courses, this is one of the most common que ...

How Important Is Instructor Presence in an Online Course?

By: EdPlus Digital Learning Team

October 13, 2014

Creating an Educational ExperienceThe ability to establish presence is closely connected to the ability of the instructor to create a sense of community among learners in an online course. (Palloff & Pratt, The Excellent Online Instructor, 2011)R ...

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