Institute for Online Teaching:

Teaching Online Learning Community (TOLC)

Kauffman Academic Residential Center on UNL City Campus

Modules

Welcome to the Teaching Online Learning Community

Join the Learning Community!

Join the Teaching Online Learning Community (TOLC) July 8 through August 2, 2024 for discussions and workshops to help you advance your online teaching.

For registration information and the dates of up-coming sessions, visit the Center for Transformative Teaching's website.

If you desire a self-paced learning experience, materials for TOLC are available asynchronously for everyone.

To start, check out the Getting Started, Course Overview, TOLC Learning Outcomes, and How to Be Successful passages below.

Getting Started

To get started with the Teaching Online Learning Community (TOLC), review the passages below. Once you have completed these tasks, click Modules under the banner image on this page or from the left-hand navigation menu to begin.

We recommend having a notepad and pen handy for notetaking, completing the Reflective Pause prompts, and organizing your knowledge in the memory matrices.

Please watch the TOLC Intro Video. Time to view = 3:25

Course Overview

The Teaching Online Learning Community (TOLC) is designed for folks who have some experience teaching or learning in online spaces. TOLC is intended to help instructors and teaching assistants take the step from surviving to thriving in their online learning environments. It will be important for you to leverage your experience teaching or learning online as you work through these materials.

We encourage you to get in touch with your instructional designer for further assistance. Your instructional designer can help you work through your pedagogical and academic technology challenges.

Reflective Pause Prompts

We encourage you to complete the Reflective Pause prompts throughout TOLC. These Reflective Pause prompts guide our discussions and considering these prompts will help you gather your thoughts.

Memory Matrices

Each TOLC module provides a memory matrix. A memory matrix can be considered a type of concept map which help learners organize their knowledge in a visual way. The provided memory matrices are designed to help you check your understanding of TOLC's learning outcomes. If the provided memory matrix doesn't work for you, we encourage you to make your own matrix or concept map.

Why?

TOLC seeks to inform and provide guidance for teaching online in a way that gets you thinking more deeply about your practice. We are striving for deep processing which is essential for learning and moving knowledge into long-term memory. We are modeling some strategies that you might use in your own course to help your students think deeply.

These strategies are great for learning if you are joining TOLC or working at your own pace. They are also requirements for the TOLC Certificate which are represented in the following Canvas Assignments:

Module Reflective Pauses (submit 3-4 responses)
Module Memory Matrix (complete the provided matrix or create your own concept map)
End of Module Feedback Survey (this helps you communicate your needs with the TOLC facilitators)

We know that summer is a busy time for instructors with travel, conferences, summer courses, etc. You need not complete every assignment to earn the certificate.

TOLC Learning Outcomes

Each module in TOLC lists learning outcomes on the Module Overview page and again on the Module Wrap-up page. Additionally, the concepts supporting the learning outcomes are found in the memory matrix located on each module's overview page.

We encourage you to review these learning outcomes and use the memory matrices before, during, and after working through the module's content. Each module has an anonymous survey where we ask you to rate how useful TOLC was in helping you understand each of the stated learning outcomes. We greatly value your feedback, and your feedback will help us improve the Teaching Online Learning Community.

How to Be Successful

TOLC's goal is to help you take your online teaching to the next step. A key component to advancing our teaching craft is identifying what we are currently doing and reflect on what items are working and the items we wish to improve. It can be too easy to become discouraged by the number of changes or modifications that you may wish to make to your course. We believe that teaching is an iterative practice and advise targeting only one or a few changes per term then reflect after the term and select your next set of goals. Both you and your course will grow from the effort!

Here are some suggestions to help you put TOLC into practice:

Know who your instructional designers are. Those in our UNL instructional community can locate their designated instructional designer here. It's good to know who to contact should you have questions or desire guidance.
Use the module memory matrices.
Take notes for points you find salient.
Use the Reflective Pauses and consider how the content intersects with your experiences.
Review as many TOLC materials as possible and check out any supplemental materials.
Keep a plan of modifications for your course(s).
Find roughly 2 hours weekly to review each module's learning materials.
- Set aside and additional 2 hours a week for the synchronous sessions.
- Total weekly time commitment is up to 4 hours.
For the best user experience, we recommend viewing TOLC in light mode.

Go to Modules