Two teacher educators describe their efforts to design and deliver online graduate courses for practicing teachers that meet psychological needs for belonging, freedom, power and fun (Glasser, 1999). Strategies to promote belonging include welcome letters, icebreaker and cooperative learning activities, personal Web pages, liberal office hours, private e-mail messages, and personalized responses to student postings, and public acknowledgement of student accomplishments. To ensure freedom for all participants the authors use minimum participation requirements, clear but flexible deadlines, multiple project options, Internet links, and access to all students\u27 work and projects. To empower their students, the authors provide ample technical support, a course bulletin board, performance assessments, and frequent opportunity to apply course material to experiences. To enhance the excitement of online learning, authors use an inviting welcome page, humor, contests and games, group projects, multimedia, and emoticons
