In the giant life plot twist that is the COVID-19 pandemic, many teachers and teacher educators have found themselves teaching online. This post focuses offers some key suggestions and tools to help.
1 - Design for online
The exhortation to “put your class online” sounds simple enough, but of course makes no sense. How can you take the rich array of complex cognitive, affective and behavioral interactions that is face-to-face teaching and learning and suddenly transform it into an online course? You can't.
What you can do, though, is design your course for this new online medium to provide learners with continued education under these extraordinary circumstances. Some activities won't be possible, and some will thrive in an online medium (for example, students are often more reflective online and more willing to communicate). Taking a week or two to plan your new online class will result in fewer revisions later during the course.
As you do “offline,” design learning outcomes and communicate them clearly to your online learners. Map out detailed instructional activities and assessment tasks that help learners attain these outcomes. As much as possible, design “universally”—activities that can be done offline or on, alone or with someone else, and with low bandwidth.
Create activities that integrate content, that are as learner-centered as possible, that are feasible, and that have clear directions and due dates. Figure out what students will learn from you, from content, from activities and from each other.
2 - Treat your course like a pilot
One silver lining of the black cloud of COVID-19 is that everything is low stakes right now so you can feel free to experiment, fail and revise your course (You should do this anyway). Ask your students for their feedback and suggestions—this invests them in the course and lowers the stakes for them and you (Read here how to pilot an online course).
3 - Prepare instructors
Teaching online is not easier than teaching face-to-face. In many ways, it is far more time-consuming and complex, as I wrote here a few years ago. Online instructors need to learn how to navigate the technology and foster communication, collaboration and interaction among learners at a distance. They need to learn online facilitation skills and how to use telecommunication tools in support of instructional methodologies and assessment.
There are a number of options for learning how to teach online. Both the Global Online Academy and EDC's EdTech Leaders Online provide online professional development in teaching online and designing online courses (for a fee). The Organization of American States is offering an online course on teaching in virtual classrooms with financial aid for educators in its Spanish-speaking member countries. If you can't afford any of these options, take a free online course, and study what the instructor does and doesn't do.
4 - Prepare learners
As many are discovering the hard way, our students need preparation and guidance to successfully learn online. If you haven't yet started online instruction (or even if you have), make sure to provide learners with an orientation to online learning generally, the course specifically, and their roles as an online learner.
Orient them on navigating the learning management system (LMS) or web-conferencing system, uploading and downloading assignments, file management, participating in a discussion forum, and how to reach out for help. Above all, online learners, especially novices, will need structured support developing self-regulation strategies, time management skills, and understanding conventions of appropriate online communication.
5 - Focus on good instruction
There are numerous issues around online learning that impact instruction: whether the course is taught in real time or not, what technology is used—for example, teaching via videoconferencing only is very different from teaching through an LMS—and the educational outcomes of the online learning program.
However, remember that it is all about good teaching. Your role is exactly as it is in a face-to-face classroom—guiding, informing, directing, facilitating, coaching, counseling and empathizing. The challenge now is doing it through technology and with minimal planning.
In online courses, just as you do in class, you will focus on:
- Management/organization: Setting expectations and ground rules; developing specific and attainable learning outcomes for each online unit of study; managing the flow and pace of learning; differentiating instruction—letting more advanced learners move on while tutoring those who are falling behind.
- Community building: Learning has a strong social-emotional component. Learners will need each other, and you, especially now, so it's important to get to know them and help them get to know each other. Taking 5 minutes at the beginning of each online session so students can have fun and get to know each other through icebreakers can do much to build camaraderie. At the beginning of the course, have pairs of learners interview each other via phone and present their classmates in an online videoconference. If using an LMS, create a forum for non-academic topics. Organize the class into smaller learning teams of 4 students. In every module, design an activity where students must collaborate in order to complete the task. This camaraderie, collegiality and sense of community will increase learner engagement in and persistence with the course.
- Communication: Ongoing communication is the lubricant for a meaningful online experience. As often as you can, given teaching workload, communicate frequently with the whole class, with online learning teams and with individuals, and design activities such that learners must communicate with each other. Hold online office hours and chats at various days and times during the week; foster rich online discussions where students interact with each other's ideas and points of view; and identify a backup communication channel outside the course itself so we can reach our students and they can reach each other (WhatsApp, SMS, phone numbers).
- Instructional strategies: Though it may not be nearly as rich and natural, most of the instruction we do face-to-face, we can also do online. Essentially, in teaching online, focus on two areas:
- Instructional variety. As in a face-to-face class, vary your online instruction depending on the particular learning outcomes of an activity. Balance synchronous and asynchronous activities; group vs. solo activities; and the amount of different types of instruction, such as:
- Direct instruction: Transmitting knowledge about concepts, skills, and procedures via demonstrations, lectures, screencasts, or online presentation
- Cognitive models of learning where students learn by engaging in a structured manner with content, a topic, a problem. Examples include inductive reasoning, open-ended questioning, teaching via analogy, concept mapping techniques, problem solving.
- Social models of learning: Collaborative instructional methods—jigsaw approaches; reciprocal teaching; discussions and debates; peer tutoring. It can be as simple as having learners collaborate on a Google Doc or partner together to complete a Choice Board (see below for an example).
- Instructional variety. As in a face-to-face class, vary your online instruction depending on the particular learning outcomes of an activity. Balance synchronous and asynchronous activities; group vs. solo activities; and the amount of different types of instruction, such as: