Teaching online can be a struggle, I know this both because I’ve tried instructing online courses but also because I’ve taken online courses myself and it’s not much fun from the student perspective either. Classroom identity and instructional design are contingent on the culture of the students, which is significantly easier to interpret and engage with when you are in the student’s physical presence. It’s hard to define, but all of the little non-verbal and gestural queues that we can pick up on, chatter between students, choices of clothing, levels of wakefulness, sleep deprivation, eagerness, all of these are almost impossible to keep track of in an online environment. With that said, I’ve linked to a list of suggestions which are largely content based suggestions. They make good points regarding the need for variety, as online learning can be extremely repetitive. Students often are taking many courses online concurrently, and will be using the same discussion tools for each class. To set each lesson apart, one will want to pull in as many interactive and external tools as possible. Something like Kahoot! Comes to mind (https://kahoot.com/) for making a quick and engaging activity that doubles as assessment. Anything you can do to get students talking to eachother at the very least, will be beneficial, to avoid the experience of talking to a few dozen students with their cameras and microphones turned off.
- Andy Bensen
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