Teaching online has become increasingly prevalent for many educators, especially at the college level. Online teaching has significant challenges, however, that instructors and professors are struggling to overcome. One of those challenges involves the delivery of effective content in conjunction with assigned readings, quizzes, exams and writing assignments. Finding the right online resources can increase the effectiveness of your online courses.

FREE Resource
The U.S. Department of Education has established a website that provides numerous online resources that can easily be integrated into the teaching of online classes in various fields. This Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE) website provides resources for teachers in the fields of the arts and humanities, science, health and physical education, language arts, math and history and social studies. Resources include animations that can be utilized on an educational website, along with videos, photographs and primary source documents. The site provides a simple site map that lists various sub-categories in each of the major fields of study covered. For instance, the science section is divided into sections for applied, earth and physical science, among others.

MERLOT
The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) website provides additional resources for teaching online. Material is divided among various categories, including the arts, social sciences, business, education, technology and science, math and statistics, and the humanities. The site provides various types of learning materials in each of these categories. Some of the materials that can be utilized include social networking tools, assessment tools, animations, reference materials and even textbook material. MERLOT is a free educational resource that can be utilized by teachers and college faculty members as both a way to incorporate material into their courses and to collaborate and share online resources.

University of Maryland University College
The University of Maryland University College (UMUC) maintains a website that provides a number of tutorials for educators who teach online classes. UMUC offers two different modules; each module contains a series of these tutorials. The first module provides the foundation for understanding how to implement resources in online coursework. Areas covered by this module include data gathering and synthesis, student presentations, collaborative learning, document and data analysis and the creation of virtual labs and field trips, among others. The second module provides educators with specific technologies that link to many of the tutorial categories in the first module. This allows educators to see how to implement what they learn by completing the first module.