I teach calculus for humanities majors and a big part of why it works is the live interaction with the students. I’m working on an online course “Calculus for the Math-Wary.” (I think I need a better title but it works for now.)

I kept agonizing over how to bring in more interaction with the students (in addition to some of the ideas that the Great eCourse Adventure works with).

I personally can’t handle the live videos with the instant messaging–I can’t type fast enough but it’s more that I can’t process it all. So I was trying to come up with an alternate idea. I thought of holding office hours via skype. I need to find out more about having multiple callers. I also thought of doing a skype introduction as they sign up, but that clearly depends on how many students we’re talking about.

Also, I’ve been working with a guy from our teaching center to improve my interactive teaching techniques. Today, he came up with a whole bunch of ideas that I believe I can adapt from the physical classroom to an online classroom. For instance, to get more active participation, handout a list of questions that guide them through setting up a problem in a way that emulates how I think my way through it. I thought that for the ecourse, I could have the students answer these questions  before I present the entire solution (only after they’ve answered it right or wrong can they move on to my explanation).

Just some thoughts I’ve been tossing around over the last couple of weeks.

Any thought? Suggestions?