Engaging Virtual Environments

by Joanne Ricevuto, Laura McLaughlin Taddei, Lillian Nave (Foreword)

"This book will help you connect with students, whether you're teaching synchronously or asynchronously, regardless of the devices students may be using; develop community; and introduce you to gamification to add enjoyment and variety to your students' experience of your class"--

Genres: Nonfiction

212 pages, Paperback

Published June 30, 2022

About the author

Joanne Ricevuto is the Assistant Vice President for Instructional Success and is responsible for the faculty programming at her institution, which includes providing and presenting a multitude of professional workshops to the faculty on various current topics in higher education. She also serves as the managing editor of the website for the Office of Instructional Success. She has been in higher education for 20+ years and a professor of early childhood education. Additionally, she is the author of many published articles on virtual learning as well as student engagement.

Reviews

[Anthony Molaro]

Shallow and Repetitive

I had such high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, it didn't meet my expectations. The book contains many QR codes, but most of them don't work, at least on the Kindle version. The authors repeat the same thing over and over again. For example, the Examples of Social, Teaching, and Cognitive presence table appears in almost every chapter. Most of the content is extremely shallow and could be published in a blog post.

In the final chapter the authors describe the importance of professional development for online teaching. They argue that quality PD is meaningful and actionable. Unfortunately this book doesn't meet that threshold.