Teaching online differs from teaching face-to-face. Online teaching requires a combination of technical skills and cognitive flexibility to translate your in-person instruction online. Once you gain familiarity with this medium, teaching online will present a slew of advantages that can produce an engaging, interactive, and effective learning experience.
Haas Digital Learning Experience Designers:
- Consult with faculty on effective teaching strategies that utilize technology to enhance learner engagement and knowledge retention
- Support faculty in designing learning activities for both synchronous and asynchronous class sessions
- Design and build content on bCourses that meets accessibility guidelines
- Assist faculty with incorporating or enhancing educational technology for experiential learning activities
Reach out to our team at [email protected] to schedule a consultation where we can discuss your course goals, review your curriculum, and support you in developing a successful and enriching learning experience for your course.
It likely won’t be a 1-to-1 transition when making the leap from in-person to remote teaching. In this section, we encourage you to think about redesigning your remote course to better suit the online environment, which will improve both the quality and outcome of your teaching.
Below, we have broken down course design into 5 key considerations:
What is the Goal?
What do I want my students to know as a result of my course? What specific changes in behavior or understanding do I want to observe in my students? When you begin with the end in mind, you can be flexible with the way the course is being delivered to meet these goals.
What Pedagogy Is Most Effective?
Utilize best practices of teaching (pedagogies) in your course design. Students succeed in classes optimized to best present the curriculum.
What method of teaching would work best for my students? Is my class scaffolded with structures in place for support and feedback? Does the class facilitate student participation and engagement (“active learning”)? Is the learning situated within students’ existing knowledge (“contextualized”)? Is the class project-based/problem-based?
What is the Final Assessment?
Next, consider the most effective way to assess your students’ understanding of the material. Often referred to as “capstones,” it is a good idea to think about the final assessment as the goal you want your students to achieve, and structure your class to build towards the capstone.
Having frequent low-stakes assessments distributed over the course of the semester is another effective way for students to stay engaged and reinforce their learning.
What Content Should I Use?
Curate your content with readings, case studies, worksheets, problem sets, field trips, guest speakers, and the like. A helpful way to think about organizing your content is outlining your class content into themes or modules.
Think about creating modules that build up to your final learning goal for your students.
What Feedback Can I Provide?
What kind of feedback would be most helpful to students as they progress towards mastery of your course material? Both formative and summative feedback are valuable and allow students to reflect upon their learning.
How often can you provide timely feedback? Are there opportunities for students to provide feedback to each other?
How can you grade student work fairly, especially for projects that involve creativity and design?
These five key considerations will help you start planning your online instruction. For a more detailed perspective on online course design, refer to Haas Digital’s Asynchronous/Synchronous Course Design Playbook. This playbook offers comprehensive guidance, including foundational frameworks, course design strategies, Haas Digital’s instructional design model, and best practices for every stage of the course design process.
You can also explore Teaching Guides and Resources from the Berkeley Center for Teaching and Learning.
Prepare a teaching space that is both comfortable and uniquely suited to you. Investing in a well-designed workspace can make remote teaching as efficient and enjoyable as in-person instruction.
Please consider the following tips as you set up your teaching space:
- A Dual Monitor: Setting up a second display monitor allows you to present content and view up to 49 participants in gallery view simultaneously.
- Lighting: Make sure your face is well-lit, and avoid backlight and overhead lighting.
- Backgrounds: Avoid busy backgrounds, and consider using a virtual background instead to minimize distractions.
- Camera /Webcam: Position your camera at eye level to make “eye contact” with your audience to allow for a more natural viewpoint.
- Audio: Use a headset with a microphone to help isolate your voice and maintain participant privacy in a shared space during discussions. You may also want to invest in a USB mic to record asynchronous content.
- Home Network: Your home network connection matters! Zoom requires a minimum bandwidth of 600kbps and recommends at least 1.5 Mbps. But we find 20 Mbps and higher to be better. Run an internet speed test to check your upload/download speeds.
The better your students can see and hear you, the easier it is for them to connect and engage with you and the material in your course. Simple, achievable visual and audio configurations will enhance your pedagogy and media production.
