Student Survey – Master of Arts in Liberal Studies

Survey on Best Practices for Online MALS Classes

In recent years, a larger percentage of MALS students have begun to take most or all of their courses online. As we review the online courses we offer, we want to make sure that instructors design courses in ways that provide the best possible educational experience for students. For this reason, we are asking for your advice and recommendations regarding the factors in online classes you have already taken that either contributed to the success of these courses or could use some improvement.

We are not asking you to speak about specific instructors by name. We just want to understand better what works and what doesn’t work from a student’s perspective, so that we can develop a template of “best practices” for online MALS classes.

Please respond to these questions:

This survey consists of seven questions about different element of instruction.
Weekly Lectures
Online instructors present weekly material in a variety of ways. It may include one or more of the following: short video lectures; narrated or unnarrated PowerPoint presentation; basic text; links to online websites or videos as background. And some course have very little lecture, aside from a sentence or two introduction to the weekly reading assignments.
What kind of introduction to weekly material have you found most useful? Is the lecture material an important part of the class? Where are the weaknesses you have seen in this area?

Weekly Readings
There is a big variation in the amount of reading assigned, and new instructors often ask how much is a reasonable amount.
From your experience, approximately how many pages of reading per week would you recommend to instructors?

Weekly Discussions
Weekly online discussions are the heart of every online class and the amount of involvement or interaction with the instructor in the discussions varies a lot from instructor to instructor. Some instructors respond to almost every student in some form or other every week, others instructors post only a moderate number of time, while other instructors rarely participate in the online discussion.
In your experience, how much instructor participation in weekly discussions is the right amount?

Real-Time Online Activities
A few instructors have tried to incorporate real-time video options in classes using Google Hangout or Skype.
Although it is usually not feasible to require this for everyone in a class, do you think it is worth including as a option for students who want to interact with each other and the instructor in real time?

Voice Thread
Many instructors use this app for students to make video introductions at the beginning of the course and for presentations later in the course.
Have you found the use of Voice Thread to be useful? Are video introductions preferable to simple text introduction in a discussion board?

Group Projects
Some courses assign group projects.
If you were involved in a group project in one of your online classes, did you find it a worthwhile experience?

Writing Assignments and Support
It is a priority of the MALS program for every class to provide opportunities for students to work on and improve their writing skills.
Have there been any particular kinds of assignments or exercises that have been especially useful for your writing skills? What kinds of support from your instructors have been most helpful in relationship to your writing? What kinds of assignments did you find most useful and/or enjoyable?
Phone
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Survey on Best Practices for Online MALS Classes

Weekly Lectures

Weekly Readings

Weekly Discussions

Real-Time Online Activities

Voice Thread

Group Projects

Writing Assignments and Support