Teaching Online - Dos and Don'ts

This summer session I got the opportunity to teach the online version of the course I have been teaching for the last year. What an experience! I had never taught a course 100% online, though I've used the online system as a tool for teaching my face-to-face class, and historically, I loathe online courses. Personally, I don't feel like I get out of the course what I want to.

Moving this course online and condensing it to 5 weeks was tough. I struggled with cutting down the assignments, readings, and course presentations without cutting vital information. All in all, my course was very rigorous but the students have been sending me emails about the experience (mostly positive), so I feel like I did a thing or two right (and many things wrong).

The course was 5 weeks and writing-intensive (not a good idea for an online, summer course, but that is another story). My final course included:

1. 3 online discussions

2. 2 exams (midterm and final)

3. 8 writing assignments toward a final research paper

4. 3 content-based assignments

5. 18 PowerPoints of content

6. 18 scholarly articles to read (plus their research paper articles)

Wow - they did a lot! And, I did a lot of grading. Whomp whomp.

Here are the things I suggest avoiding...Online Teaching Don'ts

1. Don't be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. At a conference recently, I heard someone say of online teaching, "Students view it as a hotline instead of online". This is beyond accurate. Just because the course is online and we have access to devices that allow us to respond to emails at every hour of every day does NOT mean we should. If you respond to an email at a funky time, you will get a lot more hours at a funky time.

2. Don't overload yourself with grading - you have a life, too. I always forget this point, if I assign it and they turn it in, I have to grade it. As this course is writing-intensive, I felt like I graded constantly. I wanted to give them feedback, but rather than having one week to get papers back to them (as in a regular semester), I had 3 or 4 days. Yikes! Be very cognizant of due dates and how closely they come to each other so that you have time to get the grading done without being overwhelmed. 

3. Don't be too flexible about technological glitches. I once had a professor say, "Technology will fail; it's just a matter of when". Yes! We can all tell of a time when technology was not our friend. With an online class, students will try to use technology failing as an excuse for nearly everything. What I have found works is to be very strict upfront about this (you can always ease off if you need to). Usually when students come to me, it really is a big problem and not just a glitch.

4. Don't make the course "easier". Many students believe that "online" or "summer" is synonymous with "easier". Combine these two terms and students think this is a party and an easy way to get three credits. The course should be as rigorous as face-to-face. In fact, in my opinion, it is harder because there is less time and the students can't see me. There is a great deal more work they have to do independently. However, I have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that if you raise your expectations, students will rise to the occasion to meet them. 

Now for the good stuff...Teaching Online Dos

1. Communicate often! While I do not believe you should be a "hotline" for students, it is important to communicate often with them. If you are proactive about communicating, you can fend off problems ahead of time. I did two things that really helped keep my students on task and avoided them asking me 100 tedious questions. Every Monday of the course, I sent my students a Weekly Agenda. This gave a synopsis of the objectives for the week, readings they should complete and how they related the course PowerPoints, activities the students needed to complete, and where they should be in their research paper. It served like a checklist for students to use to get through the week.

The second thing I did was send out a Weekly Synthesis at the end of each week. This included the big ideas students should have taken from the reading and course PowerPoints and recapped my overall thoughts on their assignments. For example, when students turned in writing assignments, I used this forum to outline major issues I was seeing with APA or writing. Also in these emails, I would let students know what grades had been posted or when they could expect feedback from me.

2. Include audio or video in your course presentations. PowerPoints are very boring if they are not being delivered. I don't like going through individual PPTs that other people have created; I miss the person's voice. If you are going to include PPTs with information in an online course, add video or audio of YOU. The students want the interaction with the professor. In my first PPT, I include a few pictures of myself and information about my life. In every PPT, I include audio for each slide. Students have the option of listening to this, but if they do, they can experience what a face-to-face class would be like. Many of the students in my course indicated that this was very useful because they felt like they got more content and got to hear my thoughts on everything, rather than just reading slides. 

3. Set specific time-limits on returning emails to students. My syllabus has a very specific clause that says I will "work to respond to emails within 24 hours Monday - Friday from 8am to 8pm". This means, if a student emails me at 9pm on Friday night, they can expect an answer after 8am on Monday. And, I am strict about this. As I mentioned earlier, if you respond to an email during a time you said you wouldn't, they think that means you are always available. For the most part, if students email me between 8 and 8, they get a response within a few hours, at most. 

4. Be more specific than you every thought possible. This goes for everything - explaining discussion posts, assignments, exams, PPTS, anything. Because students do not get the face-to-face explanation, they need more detail. I provided instructions, rubrics, and annotated templates for every assignment. The templates were not "samples", but were a way for me to communicate what I wanted without taking all creativity out of the assignment. The more detail you include here, the less likely you will have a bunch of questions later. 

5. Be organized! It is important to set up your course online so that it is highly organized from week to week. You want to keep a similar formatting, if possible. Some instructors like folders and some instructors like modules. It does not matter what method you pick as long as you are consistent and communicate strongly with your students. For my course, I used folders, one for each week of the course that included everything students needed for that particular week. The folders were divided into sub-folders with readings, activities, research paper assignments, and course PPTs. Every week, students knew exactly where to go for what materials. 

6. Have fun and show your personality a little. Students enjoy seeing that their instructor is a human being. When I was traveling, I told my students. If I was out of state when I needed to send an agenda or synthesis email, I began with "Greetings from ________", and the students really enjoyed it. I also shared inspirational videos and tools that I would share with my face-to-face class. The students really enjoyed this and wanted to know that I was a person, enjoying my summer too. 

Overall, I have learned so much about teaching online! I loved it, but it was challenging as well. I believe that this experience will make me a better instructor for my face-to-face classes.

I might be biased, but I think this was my favorite group of students ever to teach! :)