– An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people. – Thomas Jefferson

– Education is a social process; education is growth; education is not a preparation for life, but is life itself. – John Dewey

– To truly teach, one must converse; to truly converse is to teach. – Gallimore and Tharp

– Through others, we become ourselves. -L. S. Vygotsky

– It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. – Albert Einstein

– One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try. We learn by doing. Aristotle

– I am still learning. -Michelangelo

– The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. – Alvin Toffler

– Only the educated are free. -Epicetus

– It is better to ask some of the questions than know all of the answers. -James Thurber

– Accumulate learning by study, understand what you learn by questioning. – Mingjiao, Jiufeng Annals

– A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.- Maya Angelou

– Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. -William James

– I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” — Socrates

– Stress the right of the individual to select only what he desires to know, to use any knowledge as he wishes, that he himself owns what he has learned. Be prepared, as an instructor, to learn from the students. – L. Ron Hubbard

– It’s not ADD, I’m bored and just not listening. Engage or Enrage me.  – marc prensky

Alexandra M. Pickett

• Getting off to a good start in any online course happens by design, not by accident.  – Alex
• The only assumption an online instructor should make is to assume the perspective of the online student to aid in the design of an online course. My best advice to all new online instructors is -“Assume Nothing,” – Alex
• A student that is not well-oriented to you, your course, your specific learning activities, and your expectations, will have confusion and many questions, will feel uncomfortable, and will be less apt to succeed in your online classroom. They will definitely not be satisfied with the online learning experience, nor will they be apt to report high levels of learning. Their confusion, questions, and discomfort will result in more work for you, your own dissatisfaction, and a crummy evaluation from the student. – Alex
• Say what you mean, and do what you say. You can run your class however you want, but you have to make absolutely clear to the students what you expect and how they can succeed in your course.- Alex
• If you try something and it doesn’t work (or it breaks something)… Don’t do that again.- Alex
• A well-designed course creatively leverages the options AND recognizes the limitations of the online learning environment.- Alex
• Good online instructional practices are independent of software.- Alex
• You are just going to have to trust me on this one, it will not be fun for you or your students to have you trying to develop the course and teach it at the same time. – Alex
• Developing a course for the first time takes a new online faculty person an average of 120 hours. Plan accordingly!- Alex
• If you have created PowerPoint slide presentations that you use in class to enhance your lecture, you may be tempted to simply post them on the web for your online students. Resist that temptation.  : )
• In an online course you need to create opportunities for your students to make their thinking/learning visible. Make them do something! Think, engage, apply, defend, refute, report, self-assess.- Alex
• Learning as a social process. Online courses that are designed to promote a sense of class community, where there are ample opportunities for interaction and the social construction of knowledge, result in online teaching and learning communities of satisfied students and faculty. Think about the isolated learning experiences involved in a classic correspondence-type course… enough said.- Alex
• You can’t  recreate your traditional classroom course online. What you have to do is to reconceptualize how to achieve your instructional objectives in ways appropriate for the new kind of learning environment! – Alex
• For first time online faculty: Keep it simple. First make it work, then make it pretty. Commit to iterate.- Alex
• Online course design process: reflect, connect, organize, build refine, implement, Evolve…- Alex
• I would never discourage you from using tests online, as long as you know that the activity will be take home, open book, and potentially collaborative. But, if you try to implement a timed final MC exam online, and it is worth 25- 50% of the grade, you are missing something. . . Understand it for what it is, use it appropriately for the environment, and weigh it accordingly. – Alex
• The answer to life, the universe and everything is … instructional design. – Alex
• If you have no life because of your online course workload, you need to redesign your course.  – Alex
• Just because the course is online, does not mean that everything has to happen online. – Alex

Bill Pelz

• The best way to learn is to teach – Bill
• Grade the daily work! – Bill
• If you want your students to do the learning, then figure out how to get them to do the work.- Bill
• The best way to learn is to teach – Bill
• present. engage. assess. – Bill