(Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Psychology, 2011-12)
Brinthaupt, Thomas M.; Fisher, Lawanna S.; Gardner, Justin G.; Raffo, Deana M.; Woodward, Jennifer B.
As a core project, a university eLearning Pedagogy Faculty Learning Community (FLC)
chose to apply recommendations for the “art” of good teaching to the online realm. There
is relatively little discussion of this issue in the literature. In this paper, we use Bain‟s
(2004) book What the Best College Teachers Do to discuss some of the major ways that
the practices of effective teaching in general can be applied to online teaching in
particular. Specifically, we explore methods of fostering student engagement, stimulating
intellectual development, and building rapport with students when teaching online. This
analysis provides a much-needed “art of teaching” set of recommendations that
complements the “science of teaching” best practices approach to online pedagogy.