Online Instructors

Online Teaching Best Practices and Resources

Although online courses provide convenience and flexibility, the instructor still has the responsibility to monitor the course, answer student questions, and provide feedback. Also, ensuring that students feel safe to participate in class discussions is a must. Additionally, instructors have the responsibility for looking out for plagiarism and holding students accountable to academic honesty.

Teaching Online:

If you need additional help with teaching your online course, feel free to contact COEE.

While facilitating the course, instructors can monitor student activity and assist students in adjusting to the routine of the course in multiple modes. Course announcements, email reminders, participating in the discussion board, and giving assignment feedback are all ways to have positive interaction with the students.

Tutorial Links:

As with all courses taught at Northwest University,  faith integration should be included in online courses.  Here are some resources which will assist with this important inclusion for courses:

Council for Christian Colleges and use the search feature to find focused articles and resources

Faith Learning Integration: An Overview

Best Practices

  • Be clear about due dates. Make the time to turn in an assignment in at 11:55 PM, NOT 12 AM as this may bring confusion on what particular day an assignment is due.
  • Have online office hours via Skype, phone, etc… Students may not always take advantage of this, but it is helps create a better online presence for yourself as an instructor.
  • Remind students that you are not available 24/7 via email.  Students may become impatient if you don’t answer right away.  Tell them the times that you usually check your email.

Resources

Academic Dishonesty

Northwest University has intentionally developed a learning community that includes Academic Honesty as a foundational value and expects honesty from faculty and students in all areas, including academic lives.

Northwest University considers dishonest academic conduct by students to include any activity that allows a student to take an unfair advantage of fellow students. Examples of academic dishonesty by students include the following:

  • Cheating on assignments or examinations.
  • Submitting material that has been prepared by someone else or failure to give full credit to material prepared by someone else (plagiarism). Plagiarism is defined as “using someone else’s ideas or phrasing and representing those ideas or phrasing as our own, either on purpose or through carelessness” (MLA).
  • Arranging for another person to serve as test-taker.
  • Seeking help from another person or source during a test in which collaboration is not permitted.
  • Submitting the same (or essentially the same) paper in more than one course without prior consent of the current assigning professor(s).
  • Making false statements in order to acquire special consideration from an instructor.
  • Sabotaging another student’s work.

Additionally, for faculty, academic dishonesty includes altering a student’s grade or awarding points when not earned.

The Academic Honesty policy functions at Northwest University on an honor basis so faculty and staff agree to academic integrity standards upon hire and acknowledge a willingness to enforce the policy and report misconduct.  Academic dishonesty may result in the student failing the assignment, receiving an “F” in the course, or possibly being dismissed from the University.  Instances of academic dishonesty are typically reported to the Provost’s Office.  Any student disciplined by a faculty member for alleged academic dishonesty has the right to appeal the disciplinary action.  The student should initiate his/her appeal according to procedures outlined in the Northwest University Student Academic Appeals Policy, which is available in the Provost’s Office or the Student Development Office.

If students are suspected plagiarism based on wording and media use in their assignments:

  1. Input the suspect text in parenthesis (literal) into a search engine (e.g. Google, Webcrawler, EBSCO, Bing, etc.) and see if any matches occur.
  2. Email students showing examples of where inconsistencies occur within their work without being accusatory. Ask about their resources for these particular sections or multimedia use.
  3. If students are copying and pasting from a particular source, aid them in the use of paraphrasing or quoting. Also, aid them in the practice of citing their work or asking for author permission (in cases of multimedia use).

NU’s Academic Honesty Policy

Generative AI:

  1.  

Please see the Instructor Resources Group in NU Online for more information.

Best Practices

  • Prevention is key. At the beginning of the course or within the syllabus, mention the college or university’s policy on academic dishonesty.
  • Inform students of the importance of adhering to copyright law (includes multimedia) and citing sources.

Resources

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

Academic Honesty Violation Progression Steps

Please wait a moment...