From the Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Ed Series, University of Oklahoma Press, 2026.
by Beth Petitjean, Ph.D., Digital Learning Specialist, Reinert Center
Yes, it’s July. And, yes, it’s hot and sizzling in St. Louis. Appropriate time then for a summer book review and this time we’re perusing a recent volume from the Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Ed Series. If you’ve been a long-time reader of The Notebook, you might remember this book series from several blog articles over the last several months. The best feature of this series is their focus on practicality, something that is quickly applicable in the classroom, yet is appealing to read, especially during the too short weeks of the summer.
Flower Darby’s most recent book, The Joyful Online Teacher, is aimed “to inspire, motivate, and cultivate your online teaching joy” [21]. Her premise is that instructors get bogged down in the technical weeds of teaching online and forget to bring themselves and their humanity to bear on a course and the students in it. This causes, she claims, a problem in asynchronous courses because, “online teachers don’t seem to be in class the way [they] are when teaching in physical, or even synchronous online, classrooms” [3].
It’s very easy to get into those tech weeds, though, given all the requirements, settings, options, planning, and organization that goes into preparing an asynchronous course in the weeks and months before the course even starts. By the time it does start, the course may seem anti-climactic since the instructor has already been through it all. It’s very easy to misplace your joy during the grind of a semester, which is not unique to asynchronous courses. How then to find the joy?
Darby answers this question by repackaging essential practices into thematic chapters that emphasize the humanity and presence of the instructor in the course during the entire span of the course. She emphasizes using video to communicate with students and to always present a welcoming approach to students. Her penchant for positivity drives her own teaching practices, and she reminds her audience to “bring your warmth. Your enthusiasm. Your light. Your energy…[and to show] your students that you care about them and that you believe in them” [80-81]. Doing all this reveals your humanity and distinguishes you as a real person and not an AI bot lurking somewhere in cyberspace while students go it alone in the well-organized asynchronous course.
The highlight of this book is Darby’s inclusion of instructor well-being, which often gets shunted aside in the current state of higher education. She reminds us to set boundaries and give ourselves permission to pursue our own physical, mental, emotional, and intellectual health [34-36]. We can never be reminded enough about this!
To that end, I will set a boundary and close this review so that we may all enjoy the remaining days of summer. We’ll see you soon at the Reinert Center as we kick-off the Fall 2026 Semester with a week of events aimed to get you fizzing for the first day of class!
Additional Resources:
The Reinert Center has numerous Resource Guides that relate to topics within this book. Take some time to look around the various pages, especially the Distance Teaching and Instructional Continuity page, which includes a lot about asynchronous teaching.
For more information or to discuss how you might incorporate these ideas into your courses, contact the Reinert Center by email or submit a consultation request form.
The Notebook 