Introducing "Navigating the Digital Shift: An Introductory Guide to Online Teaching," a comprehensive mini eBook meticulously designed to facilitate professors in transitioning seamlessly to online or digital instruction. This invaluable resource serves as a beacon for educators venturing into the realms of virtual teaching, providing concise, practical insights coupled with actionable tools to navigate the digital education landscape effectively. Within its pages, professors will uncover a plethora of practical tables, user-friendly templates, and detailed checklists, each crafted to demystify the online teaching process and ensure a smooth transition. Whether you're a seasoned educator or a newcomer to the teaching profession, this guide offers tailored solutions, best practices, and innovative strategies to set up every new online instructor for unparalleled success. Dive into the world of online instruction with confidence, equipped with the knowledge and tools necessary to create engaging, inclusive, and effective learning experiences in the virtual classroom.

Community engagement and a sense of belonging are pivotal elements in the realm of digital instruction, serving as the bedrock for enriched learning experiences and fostering a conducive learning environment. When learners feel integrated into a community, it acts as a catalyst, enhancing motivation, encouraging persistence, and providing a buffer against the isolation often associated with digital learning platforms. To facilitate the creation and nurturing of online communities and engagement, a meticulously crafted checklist is provided, offering practical tasks and steps. This checklist serves as a beacon, guiding educators and learners through the multifaceted process of building community engagement and fostering a sense of belonging.

This course examines the issues, principles, and challenges toward building relational machines through a combination of studio-style design and critique along with lecture, lively discussion of course readings, and assignments. Insights from social psychology, human-computer interaction, and design will be examined, as well as how these ideas are manifest in a broad range of applications for software agents and robots.

The SHSU Online Course Design Rubric is used to guide and inform the course development process, as well as evaluate the design of any course which contains online components. It can be used whether the course is fully or partially online, flipped or web‐assisted face‐to‐face.

The Rubric was developed by a team of instructional designers and course development practitioners based on nationally recognized, research‐based quality assurance standards related to the essential components of online course design. This includes...

- General course information
- Presentation of course content
- Collaboration & Communication
- Assessment Strategies
- Course Technology
- Learner Support, and
- Accessibility

Not only is the rubric the primary instrument utilized at SHSU for the development and evaluation of online courses, but the tool can also be used as a self‐assessment instrument by instructors as a means to receive constructive feedback on the design of a course, and a means to identify and document effective online course design.

The SHSU Online Course Design Rubric has also been vetted by faculty who are actively involved in online teaching for SHSU. Use of the rubric to inform the development of distance education courses leads to multiple benefits, including...

- Improved student learning
- Ease of navigation of the course environments
- Reduced ambiguity for faculty and students
- More appropriate use of technology

The Rubric for Hybrid/Blended Course Design with FEEDBACK is a fillable tool that can be used to evaluate the integration of pedagogy in a fully online course. This tool is a compliment to the SHSU Online Course Design Rubric, also located as Open Source in the OERTX. This tool can be used by various types of reviewers, from instructional designers, to peer faculty reviewers, to program assessment reviewers, or external reviewers.

Also check out the SHSU Online Course Design Rubrics for fully online courses, online-live courses, and hybrid/blended courses.

The SHSU Online Course Design Rubric is used to guide and inform the course development process, as well as evaluate the design of any course which contains online components. It can be used whether the course is fully or partially online, flipped or web‐assisted face‐to‐face.

The Rubric was developed by a team of instructional designers and course development practitioners based on nationally recognized, research‐based quality assurance standards related to the essential components of online course design. This includes...

- General course information
- Presentation of course content
- Collaboration & Communication
- Assessment Strategies
- Course Technology
- Learner Support, and
- Accessibility

Not only is the rubric the primary instrument utilized at SHSU for the development and evaluation of online courses, but the tool can also be used as a self‐assessment instrument by instructors as a means to receive constructive feedback on the design of a course, and a means to identify and document effective online course design.

The SHSU Online Course Design Rubric has also been vetted by faculty who are actively involved in online teaching for SHSU. Use of the rubric to inform the development of distance education courses leads to multiple benefits, including...

- Improved student learning
- Ease of navigation of the course environments
- Reduced ambiguity for faculty and students
- More appropriate use of technology

The Rubric for Online Course Design with FEEDBACK is a fillable tool that can be used to evaluate the integration of pedagogy in a fully online course. This tool is a compliment to the SHSU Online Course Design Rubric, also located as Open Source in the OERTX. This tool can be used by various types of reviewers, from instructional designers, to peer faculty reviewers, to program assessment reviewers, or external reviewers.

Also check out the SHSU Online Course Design Rubrics for fully online courses, online-live courses, and hybrid/blended courses.

The SHSU Online Course Design Rubric is used to guide and inform the course development process, as well as evaluate the design of any course which contains online components. It can be used whether the course is fully or partially online, flipped or web‐assisted face‐to‐face.

The Rubric was developed by a team of instructional designers and course development practitioners based on nationally recognized, research‐based quality assurance standards related to the essential components of online course design. This includes...

- General course information
- Presentation of course content
- Collaboration & Communication
- Assessment Strategies
- Course Technology
- Learner Support, and
- Accessibility

Not only is the rubric the primary instrument utilized at SHSU for the development and evaluation of online courses, but the tool can also be used as a self‐assessment instrument by instructors as a means to receive constructive feedback on the design of a course, and a means to identify and document effective online course design.

The SHSU Online Course Design Rubric has also been vetted by faculty who are actively involved in online teaching for SHSU. Use of the rubric to inform the development of distance education courses leads to multiple benefits, including...

- Improved student learning
- Ease of navigation of the course environments
- Reduced ambiguity for faculty and students
- More appropriate use of technology

Definition Online Live Course: 100% of instruction (lectures) and course contact hours occurring synchronously (live) online. An online live course is defined at SHSU as an online course with 100% of instruction (lectures) and course contact hours occurring synchronously (live) online. Students enrolled in an online-live course are required to participate in synchronous, online instruction and other course activities in real-time during scheduled class meeting times. Course materials, activities, and instructional assets will be stored in the learning management system.

The Rubric for Online-Live Course Design with FEEDBACK is a fillable tool that can be used to evaluate the integration of pedagogy in a fully online course. This tool is a compliment to the SHSU Online Course Design Rubric, also located as Open Source in the OERTX. This tool can be used by various types of reviewers, from instructional designers, to peer faculty reviewers, to program assessment reviewers, or external reviewers.

Also check out the SHSU Online Course Design Rubrics for fully online courses, online-live courses, and hybrid/blended courses.

Innovation in expression -- as realized in media, tangible objects, and performance, and more -- generates new questions and new potentials for human engagement. When and how does expression engage us deeply? While "deep engagement" seems fundamental to the human psyche, it is hard to define, difficult to reliably design for, and hard to critically measure or assess. Are there principles we can articulate? Are there evaluation metrics we can use to insure quality of experience? Many personal stories confirm the hypothesis that once we experience deep engagement, it is a state we long for, remember, and want to repeat. We need to better understand these principles and innovate methods that can insure higher-quality products (artifacts, experiences, environments, performances, etc.) that appeal to a broad audience and that have lasting value over the long term.