Surprise! You're teaching online ... immediately.

Many schools are transitioning to online instruction as part of their plan to reduce student and faculty exposure to COVID-19.  While that's a good idea, in general, it leaves many instructors who've only taught face-to-face wondering where to start.  I've included below a few tips that may be helpful.

1. Start by reviewing your learning outcomes/objectives. What should students be able to do as a result of this instruction? Prioritize these goals and focus your initial efforts on those. Next, think about what students can do as learners, on- or offline, to get there.
   
   
2. Next, identify the tools they can use to practice their new skills and give you (and/or their peers) the opportunity to provide feedback. They could write papers, contribute to discussions, make short videos, develop concept maps, or start a blog, just as a few examples. Not so different from what you've been doing, right?
   
   
3. If you typically go over key points from the readings to reinforce important concepts, consider making some brief videos. These do not need to be fancy, high-tech productions! Consider using a free tool like Screencast-o-Matic to record narration over your slides (PowerPoint or Prezi, for example) or anything you can show on your screen. You can even record yourself on camera full-screen or as a picture-in-picture. 
   
   
4. If you plan to use a videoconferencing application to provide some real-time instruction, limit how long you talk before asking questions, even more than you normally do. Build in simple polls to get students engaged or have them use the "raised hand" feature to respond to a "How many of you ...?" type question. When I want students to participate in the discussion, here's the technique I rely on:

• Ask a question that doesn't have just one right answer.
  
• Wait while they think... keep waiting... just a bit longer... then
• Call on two students to respond. By waiting until after I've asked the question, all of them will be considering how they would respond.
• Either called-on student can go first (I let them jump in when they're ready), but the second answerer needs to expand on the first response or explain why they disagree.
• Then, I open it up for other students to contribute, again by expanding or disagreeing.
• If one of the students I call on feels very unready, I let them pass and call on them later.
• I keep track of who I've called on and who's volunteered, so everyone gets a chance.
• My students like this method, much more than the silence while everyone waits to see if somebody is going to say something. (Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?) It keeps things moving and encourages students to come to the session prepared to participate.
  
  

Successful online courses can build student autonomy and engagement, so don't hesitate to hold students accountable for getting their work done and keep up with the reading.

More tips to come in my next post!