Just as the craft of teaching face-to-face classes is developed over time and with practice, the same is true with teaching online. The USG Online Series is designed to help build this craft and provides special information about how you can support those students who have limited Internet access connectivity at home and may not have regular access to a computer or laptop given the current tumultuous state of affairs. Please see the UDL page below for more direction on supporting all students. This course in the USG Series focuses on Improving Student Engagement and Cultivating an Online Learning Community.

Understanding how and when to encourage active learning is an important aspect of engaging students in the online course environment. A similar theme you will see throughout this course is that there are a plethora of different methods for engaging students in your online course. You will notice that there are very few singular concepts or instances where there is only one agreed-upon best approach. As a result, you may begin to feel overwhelmed by all the options and paralyzed with indecision trying to attempt to incorporate everything into your teaching practice. One recommended way to go about working through this course is with a lens grounded in your own online teaching philosophy. Keeping your online teaching philosophy (see Module 1) in the back of your mind will ensure that you focus on the methods and tools that will best serve how you will ultimately teach your own online course and help you to cultivate an online teaching plan that will be beneficial to your students.

This Start Here module was put together under the direction of Camille Pace, MSAS.