Teaching in an online environment can be quite different than teaching in a classroom. Teaching online requires specific competencies and skills associated with effective online course teaching and facilitation.

Before the Course Begins

Before your online course begins, it is important that you feel confident using the tools in the online learning environment and that you become familiar with how the course is set up. The following are some of the key activities to consider:

• Create an effective course outline that communicates course expectations, guidelines of online behavior, and course organization

• Effectively use the Brightspace and other technologies selected to support the course, including Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat

• Possess an understanding of copyright and intellectual property issues in using content in an online course

During the Course

If you are new to teaching online, fostering an engaging and interactive online learning environment for your students may seem challenging. The following are a number of strategies and considerations to keep in mind during the course:

• Teach students about online learning and help them to connect materials with their own personal learning styles

• Promote active learning techniques and relate the subject matter to students' interests and experiences

• Develop relationships with students and encourage social interaction between students

• Encourage the exchange of ideas, arguments, and perspectives among students to facilitate the development of a community of learners

• Promote collaborative learning and model good participation; if needed, redirect the discussion, if headed in the wrong direction

• Create ongoing opportunities for reflection, critical analysis, and self-exploration

• Encourage students to respect the course schedule and assignment submission due dates

• Provide students with meaningful feedback on their assignments and participation in a timely fashion

• Maintain frequent contact with students

• Effectively and efficiently manage and administer the course

• Be sensitive to disabilities and diversities, and respect various ways of learning

• Monitor student compliance with NICC's academic integrity policy

• Effectively navigate the course website and use the tools in Brightspace

After the Course Ends

The end of a course can be busy but it is important to continue to engage with students, take care of administrative tasks, and take time to reflect on your practice. Consider following these steps as the course comes to a close:

• Provide students with assignment grades and submit final grades on time

• Give prompt feedback to students on final papers and tests

• Evaluate your own teachings

In many courses, face-to-face class periods provide the students (and the instructors) with a “home base.” While Brightspace course sites are, in many cases, beginning to fulfill this role in face-to-face courses, for many courses—particularly those which are smaller—class times are where students get their “map” of the term: what has happened, what will happen, what they have to do. It’s also where they get a sense of belonging, a sense that the class is a community of which they are a welcome part. In-person course meetings are filled with dozens of small conversations and micro-interactions that give students this “map” and this sense of belonging, many (most?) of which don’t even involve the instructor: a student might quickly look over a peer’s shoulder to see which PDF he or she has open, ask a student sitting nearby to confirm the deadline for a paper assignment, or venture a guess to their neighbor before daring to answer an instructor’s question in front of the whole class.

Instructors looking to recreate the “invisible” aspects of face-to-face course meetings online might try some of the following:

• Create opportunities for casual interaction. If the invisible “micro-interactions” (think “water-cooler talk”) that ground students are no longer going to routinely happen by accident, think about scheduling them in. If there are three key things students need to know to orient themselves in your class, help them out by putting them into pairs or small groups in Zoom to ask the simple questions that will get them talking about these key orienting points (“what’s the reading for next week?” or “what are you going to write your midterm paper on and are we clear on when it’s due?”).

• Help everyone be a part of the learning environment. While we typically focus first on making sure the students can see and hear the instructor, it’s equally crucial that students are seen and heard (and that they feel they are seen and heard), and this takes some additional structure and intentionality online. Even if you are reluctant in your face-to-face class to structure student contributions (i.e. by going around the “room” and asking each student to make a comment, or by having structured student presentations), you might think of doing so in the online environment. Even if it is ostensibly less efficient than the free-flowing conversation you may have in your typical classroom, it helps to ensure that each student feels connected with the spine of the class. This might be accomplished in a Zoom live session, or through the Brightspace discussion tool on their own time, but by a due date. 

• Think about ways you can be inclusive to all learners in your course during live sessions in Zoom. There is a suite of feedback icons that can help you determine engagement and give your students some choice on which way to proceed or which topic to talk about next. For example, there is a ‘raised hand’ icon a student can click on as well as a thumbs-up or down. The “no” icon can be used for students you call on who are just not ready or able to speak. In addition, there are richer live polling options which could be useful.

Give permission for an extra few minutes for a casual chat when employing course-related small group discussions in a live class session via Zoom. Students who are now remote might be missing the ever-present interactions with their peers. Come up with an agreement with your students on how to get back on-topic if casual chatter goes beyond a few minutes.

You might want students to work together in small groups to solve problems, decode concepts, or analyze new examples of the phenomenon you are studying. Google Docs and Google Slides are wonderful (and wonderfully commonplace) tools for student collaboration. Small groups of students can collectively author Google Docs, communicating and collaborating with each other in the comments. For coding/scripting activities, students can be sent off to Zoom breakout rooms and share their screen. Breakout rooms also have whiteboards for students to create diagrams, or they can share a group worksheet via Google docs to complete together. 

What might be initially lacking from the student experience is a way to share handwritten solutions to problems. If students do not have a table or iPad it can be difficult, however, many of the strategies we suggest to professors can be used by students. Setting up a webcam to face a write-able surface or act as a document camera is do-able. Additionally, students could have a bold black marker and write on paper/clipboard that is held up to the camera. Students can get creative and they might bring their own ideas on how to foster teamwork.

Designing and Facilitating Online Discussion Forums

If you haven’t used online discussion forums in Brightspace yet, we have a guide for you. Online discussion forums give students an opportunity to think about and compose responses to classmates, with a great deal more care and thought than what might happen in a live discussion. Besides the typical “academic discussion” you might think of, Brightspace discussions can take a range of purposes that help your students meet your goals. Here are some ideas that go beyond the typical discussion question:

• Use Brightspace discussions to prep live discussions and hold students accountable for reading or watching course materials. It might be a basic question where students can give informed opinions, ask thoughtful questions or each contributes a salient point.

• Set up a discussion forum for general course questions and chatter, where everyone can benefit from the questions and answers.

• Use a discussion topic for brainstorming ideas or addressing misconceptions.

• Students can share files, links to videos, images, etc. The rich-content editor for discussions in Brightspace is the same one instructors use to build courses. Get creative!

• Whole classes can break out into separate discussion groups. In general, for academic or course-related discussions consider having no more than 8 people in a group.

• There are various settings for discussions in Brightspace - including “Users must start a thread before they can read and reply to other threads ”