Basics of Online Teaching

Getting started

Online teaching and learning are becoming more and more mainstream in higher education globally. Most students will do at least some of their learning online during typical degree programs, and some will choose to do most or all their learning in that mode.

As an instructor assigned to teach an online course, there are several considerations before you get started. The CTL’s Teaching Online Resource offers a wealth of information to guide you through the process.

As with most teaching settings, start with the learning outcomes for the course – what should students know and be able to do at the end of the course? Once you have those, look at the course delivery modes with definitions of fully online, remote, hybrid, hy-flex, and bimodal courses to get a sense of what instructional mode and assessment approaches might work best for your subject and your students. Then you can choose a delivery mode to meet the learning needs of the course and its students.

A few things to consider

Your learning outcomes will determine the types of interactions you design (with you, the course learning materials, and each other) and what students need to be able to achieve the goals you have set for them.
Below are seven things that we recommend that you consider before developing your online course (adapted from Udermann (2019)):

1. Establish a timeline for designing and developing the course. Development timelines can vary considerably from course to course, depending on access to additional resources, and the schedule of the instructor.  If a course is being designed and developed from scratch, 6-12 months of development time may be needed.
2. Determine what you really want your students to know. This may sound basic, but it is critical to spend adequate time narrowing down the course content to what you want students to learn (big ideas) and how students will demonstrate them. Through backward design [insert Course & Instructional Design URL], you can develop assessments and learning activities that are aligned to your learning outcomes. Through consultations, an OOL learning specialist will help you develop those things.
3. Explore alternatives to commercial textbooks. While digital versions of traditional textbooks are often sold as a one-stop-shop for online courses, they can be very restrictive and are rarely a perfect fit. Increasingly, faculty are finding or creating Open Educational Resources (OERs) such as open-licensed videos, modules, open textbooks, open courseware, open data sets, and other alternative resources that not only save your students money but also liberate your teaching!
4. Create a participation plan. Planning for all the ways you want your students to interact with you, their peers, and the course content is critical to the success of an online course. Creating a participation plan before an online course is underway can help you feel more organized, prepared, and confident with online teaching. What do you want the weekly interaction schedule to look like? Will you have synchronous or asynchronous communication with your students (or both)? Will there be live classes via Microsoft Teams or Zoom? What about your office hours? How do you want your students to contact you? (tell them specifically!).
5. Decide what technology is most appropriate for your class. Teaching online doesn’t necessarily require a large suite of technology (although your course may require some specialized tech). You may think of the LMS (Brightspace) as the hub of online course interactions, but you may also be using tools outside of the LMS, depending on your pedagogical needs and preferences. We can go over technology options for you and help you choose the ones that work best for you.
6. Manage your workload. One of the things that often happen in online courses is that you can include too much content because it is relatively easy to keep adding more and more links to files, websites, and so on. We suggest being as economical with as possible with the amount of course content to avoid student cognitive overload! Do share a plan with students for how and when they can expect to interact with you. Resist the temptation to answer every email as soon as it comes in yet be available to students may would benefit from reassurance. Be strategic in building the components of the course so they can be reused in future offerings and can be used in other courses that you teach. Similarly, resist the urge to add more assessments in your online courses than in face-to-face courses. While online quizzes and tests can save you time, providing feedback to students is an excellent pedagogical practice that can be laborious and time consuming. We can discuss ways to make your online teaching more manageable and sustainable for you.
7. Take advantage of the existing faculty support services. Learning specialists in the Office of Open Learning specialize in supporting faculty with online teaching. They will help you ideate, design, develop, and implement your online course. They can also assist with collecting and summarizing student feedback on your online teaching; evaluating the design or redesign of your online course, for example, in terms of accessibility and AODA compliance; Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (EDI) and Indigenization; and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) purposes, so make sure you use the services available to you. We will be happy to serve as your sounding board in individual consultations, lead customized workshops for your project team or academic unit, and even facilitate digital teaching courses and programs to meet your teaching needs.  You don’t have to do it all alone!

References

Open AI. (2024). DALL-E (Version 2). [Artificial intelligence system]. (Jun 19 version). https://openai.com/dall-e-2. Prompt: image of a cute robot teaching online in typical faculty office.

Udermann, B. (2019, January 16). Seven Things to Consider Before Developing Your Online Course. Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/online-course-design-and-preparation/seven-things-to-consider-before-developing-your-online-course/