Bringing "small" teaching into the online classroom | Digital Learning - Inside Higher Ed

Author of new book, by Flower Darby, eLearning professional, explains how she has adapted James Lang's principles for the virtual classroom, to help online instructors produce better learning.

Small Teaching Online:  
Applying Learning Science in Online Classes

In the three years since it was published, James Lang's Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons From the Science of Learning has been widely recognized as an essential resource about effective teaching and learning. The book has helped to make Lang, a professor of English and director of the D'Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College, a highly sought expert on using learning science to update teaching practices for today's environment.

But the book, Lang is the first to admit, had little to say about teaching in a digital environment, as growing numbers of instructors do. That's because Lang himself hasn't taught online.

That struck Flower Darby as an opportunity. When Lang spoke at Northern Arizona University, where Darby is a senior instructional designer (she also teaches online there as well as at Estrella Mountain Community College), the two connected (we'll let her tell the story below). The result is Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes (Jossey-Bass), written by Darby with insights from Lang.

Darby answered questions about her book via email.

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Source: Inside Higher Ed