What Works in Online Teaching?

Professor Lisa Lawmaster Hess mentions a few tools and techniques that worked for her in her online classes (Seven Things That Worked in My Online Class) and many of them were also discussed here in the Cengage Blog. Here are some articles where we discuss these tools:

Tools for Online Teaching

• Professor Hess prefers an asynchronous approach to teaching rather than the whole class getting on Zoom calls where discussion is sometimes difficult to elicit.  We talked about how to make discussion boards work in this article: Building Community via Engaging Online Discussions
• Hess advises you to add your voice to your slides and in this post, professor Shawn Orr gives you a few tips and tools to help accomplish this: Awakening the Zombie: How to Transform Your Class with Active Learning
• Weekly video greetings: everyone will tell you that you must include at the very least an introductory video in which you introduce yourself to the class. Hess suggests, and we heartily agree, that you need to go beyond just that one video if you are to form a relationship with your students in your online classes. If you haven’t looked into Techsmith’s Knowmia, we heartily recommend it as a tool that will help you accomplish this task.
• Solicting feedback informally: you can do this in a variety of ways, but professor Shawn Orr has plenty of suggestions in her webinar on Apps and Ideas to Engage Students Now for Success Later.
• Consider ePortolios instead of exams. Not sure where to start with ePortfolios? We’ve got you covered in this post from Dr. Tanya Martini from Brock University: ePortfolios: Useful Tips to Get You Started

There’s plenty of advice for teachers looking to “wake up the zombie within” and get students more fully engaged in their online classes. Check out more teaching tips here.