Editor Reviews :

Product Description:
This book, ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS: Prepare, Design, and Teach Your Online Course offers an easy-to-follow guide that is based on a model developed from experience with hundreds of online courses. The authors are members of The Concord Consortium, a nonprofit educational technology lab dedicated to improving teaching practices through the appropriate integrated use of technology in the classroom.

Based on their experience, the authors offer the Concord Consortium e-Learning Model — which provides a working overview of online teaching — and seventeen essential elements that take you step-by-step through everything you’ll need to know for successful online teaching.

The essential elements are presented in three sections — prepare, design, and teach — that will take you from the starting gate to the finishing line, offering complete assistance for the new online teacher and new techniques and tips for those who have taught online before.

With tips addressing everything from technology to student assessments, from online community building to collaborative teaming, and from scheduling and pacing to facilitating online discussions, the authors have the virtual classroom covered.

Rating : - Glad I found it!
I was very glad to discover this little book and adopted it as the text for a faculty training course I teach at a community college. It is technology independent, making it ideal for teaching the principles of online course development. I've been using this book for several years now, and although it's a few years old, good information design and online teaching practices don't really change, so it hasn't become outdated.