Online Teaching Assignments

How to Handle Assignments in Online Teaching and Learning
Handling assignments is an important element of successful online education 

• Like any endeavor, online learning/teaching can be done well or poorly.
• The single important element of successful online education is interaction among participants.
• The instructor’s role is to ensure that high level of interaction occurs in an online course.
• One technique to achieve the high level interaction is to have students complete regular (e.g., weekly) assignments.

(Source: “Making the most of online learning and teaching”, June 7, 2004)

Examples of Handling Assignments
Sharing of Ideas

• Instructor posts assignments that consist of answers to problems or questions.
• Students’ responses are posted publicly so that everyone in the class can read them; this provides a basis for sharing of ideas and discussion among participants.

Group Activities

• Students can be divided into small groups of 3-4 based upon common or complementary interests/skills.
• These groups can be formed for the full duration of a course (e.g., design teams for a project) or they can be short-term for the completion of a particular assignment (e.g., weekly discussion of a problem/issue).
• Group membership can be assigned by the instructor or can be determined by the participants themselves.

(Source: “Making the most of online learning and teaching”, June 7, 2004)

Tools to Handle Assignments
The following are several tools available to you to handle assignments in St. John’s University.

• FACPUB - An unofficial Web site for faculty
• Prof_Share: The professor drive contains a folder for each class that a professor teaches.  It can be used to exchange files between instructor and students.
• St. John’s E-mail
• St. John’s Central: (Campus Pipeline) is a portal (gateway) to access SJU’s all Web services
• St. John’s WebCT:  Software that is “Courseware” for online instruction

The chart below compares the functionality of each tool in handling assignment tasks.