Online Teaching: Building Success within Your Classroom Community

Overview: Since Covid-19 pandemic teaching a online has become a significant option. And while I believe younger students need in-class (not online) instruciton, for many there is no classroom option.

I have been teaching online through Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth for a number of years now. And while the courses I teach have already been vetted, there is a lot to learn from them. Over the next few posts, I will be sharing some of these lessons.

Challenges of Teaching Online - with some cursory management suggestions:

• Managing the Challenges of Teaching online: Getting to know students you haven't (necessarily) met personally. It is challenging to build online relationships and new communities with new students you haven't met personally. I suggest starting with 'getting to know you' games and memes. Teaching suggestions: You might ask students to describe in a public forum (whether this is written or spoken or acted out):

  • What color best describes them and why;

  • Many cultures believe in animal spirit guides - what might your animal spiritual guide be and why;

  • What punctuation mark best describes them and why;

• Children have significantly shorter attention spans when learning online. This is in part because of how they typically work online (often socializing/playing/working on multiple screens; distractions around them - be they phones, noise outside or next door, great smells coming from the kitchen, etc). Teaching suggestions: Keep distractions to a minimum and teach frontal teaching to a minimum. Group or indiidual work assignments/challenges should be the focus.

• Learning needs to be active and interactive. Typical front-room lecturing will not work as effectively online because in a classroom there is:

  • More control of what's going on in the room;

  • You can use your physical presence to help redirect attention when needed;

  • You have resources organized in your classroom for easy access - your students and their work spaces may not be as organized.

    Teaching suggestions: Keep frontal teaching short and to a minimum. Projects and challenges are helpful here.

• Motivating students is always a challenge as they all have different affinities, skills, and perspectives. Motivating from afar becomes even more challenging because you don't initially know them as well, and interactions will be different. Teaching suggestions: Grading helps here. Have a grading component for on-line work, on-line participation, and on-line attention.

• It is difficult to monitor each and every student's attention and progress as you're looking at multiple screens while trying to get a lesson across. To help, you may want to create grating rubrics BEFORE you begin a lession and share the rubrics with your students so they know what is important for success.

• Creating opportunities for interaction, discussion and discourse with new online tools can be cumbersome and each of us has a different learning curve and comfort with new tools and technologies. It is important though to make sure students interact with each other in groups, in discussions, and in projects because:

  • Having different types of activities will help with engagement and attention;

  • Having different types of activities will foster integration of content and promote critical thinking.

• Evaluating and assessing lesson successes must also be done a bit more creatively and as you'll read later in the series is tantamount to online learning. Suggestions: Here too, a grading rubric which is presented at the onset of a lesson or unit would be helpful.

• Structuring time effectively will also pose new challenges.

Meeting these Challenges:

• Effectively prioritize what matters most during remote, online instruction.

• Schedule your day and your students’ to maximize teaching and learning (and avoid burnout).

• Streamline curricular units and roll them out digitally.

• Record highly engaging short lessons that students will enjoy and learn from.

• Confer, working with small groups, and drive learning through independent practice.

• Partner with the adults in a student’s home to support your work with their child.

• Feedback loops are key to building strong connections with learners in an online environment. When students complete a task, they get feedback and make adjustments accordingly. Feedback is meant to be non-evaluative and focused on a specific course learning objective. To give effective commentary, instructors must explain why a student is receiving the feedback, and suggest how they can improve in the future. This process also encourages students to reflect on that feedback, thus creating an iterative loop focused on individual progress and improvement over the course of a semester. Since this is an ongoing process, regular online formative assessments can build a continuous feedback loop. Using tools such as online assessments or platforms like Top Hat, you can provide specific, immediate feedback to students, giving instructors the chance to evaluate student performance.

• Offer weekly course reports to track student comprehension, outlining where they performed well and where they need more work. You may want to send these reports to parents as well as students and have parents 'sign off' that they've read and understood the report.

• Interaction among students is one of the single most important elements of successful online education. Collaborative engagement motivates learning and promotes a deeper and more critically aware approach to the subject matter.

• To encourage collaborative problem-solving, consider giving students a more specific task than simply “commenting” on each other’s ideas. Ask directly for constructive feedback about their classmates’ submissions. For example: “Focus on one claim in a colleague’s response that you think deserves to be developed in more depth. Suggest how that claim could be further developed and supported with evidence.”

• Offering them an online learning environment that is mission-based will allow them to increase their self-confidence once they see they are -at their own pace- achieving pre-set goals and strengthening important abilities while having fun.

• Problem-based learning is a collaborative learning strategy that gives students the opportunity to apply course material to real-world case studies in small groups. This method, whether used in group learning or individually, helps students build upon their creativity and critical thinking skills. Students are invited to analyze, synthesize and then critique the information presented. By drawing on one another’s expertise and through seeking out online resources and tools, students who use problem-based learning can reach their course’s learning objectives in collaborative, meaningful ways.The shift to online learning can be difficult. It can require restructuring course components using new pedagogical approaches, learning activities and tech tools that may be new to you and your students. The pandemic has surely caused a change in the usual teaching and learning practices employed in the on-campus classroom environments, but that doesn’t mean they must be abandoned altogether. By instilling collaboration, frequent communication and active learning into your classroom, you can still ensure students receive valuable and engaging educational experiences, regardless of where learning takes place.

• Motivating: Offering them an online learning environment that is mission-based will allow them to increase their self-confidence once they see they are -at their own pace- achieving pre-set goals and strengthening important abilities while having fun.

• Students interacting with each other will make lessons more meaningful. Build in group or pair work.

• Have office hours through Zoom/Skype, etc. 

• Post weekly announcements that summarize the previous week and help students prepare for the next week. 

• Establish guidelines that make it clear available times and methods of providing feedback on assignments. Reuse customized feedback from semester to semester, but also adapt it for a personal touch (Lehmann & Chamberlin, 2015).  

• Set expectations for students to be responsible for their own learning, too – be the guide rather than the expert in an online environment if the course is well structured. 

These issues just touch the surface. Please share successess and glitches in the comments. A Part II will follow shortly.