When designing an online course, you should aim to focus less on recreating in-person activities and more on choosing instructional approaches that work well in an asynchronous environment.
A range of educational technology tools can support these approaches, giving you new ways to build engagement, encourage interaction, and promote deeper learning without requiring real-time participation. The ideas and tools below highlight practical activity types you can use to adapt and strengthen your course for an online format.
Class demonstrations are a great strategy for capturing student interest. They introduce students to equipment or materials by demonstrating how they’re used, and they increase students’ engagement with a concept. Record your demonstration as a video clip or develop a document with step-by-step illustrations. To ensure that your videos are accessible, add transcriptions or closed captioning. By drafting your video to sites such as YouTube, you can upload transcripts or create auto captioning and edit as necessary.
While there’s no doubt that students benefit from group work, in the online environment group work can present both the instructor and students with a different set of challenges.
To help facilitate group dynamics and overcome barriers to online group work:
- Provide students with tools for online collaboration (such as Google Docs, Dropbox)
- Ask students to utilize approved video conferencing tools (Google Hangout, Zoom)
- Offer a platform for brainstorming ideas (Padlet, Mindmeister).
In addition to these structures, you will notice that students often find their own ways to collaborate effectively.
Both formal and informal presentations where students prepare and present a speech, and then respond to questions or critiques are invaluable learning experiences. Media such as VoiceThread, Flipgrid, Screencast-o-matic allow students to record their presentation and share the link with the class.
Student-to-student and student-to-instructor dialogue can occur outside the standard discussion board within a learning management system. One of the most significant transitions from face-to-face teaching is the loss of in-class discussion. In an asynchronous online course, faculty can employ discussion boards to foster dialogue.
While some faculty are skeptical about their value, when used effectively, they provide unique opportunities for students to engage with you, each other, and the content. Alternatives to traditional discussion boards include blogs, journals, portfolios, Wikis, or even social media.
Students appreciate frequent feedback on their success in a course. Automatically scoring quizzes can be used to provide students with immediate feedback. Quizzes also are great for formative assessments as they provide you with a glimpse of how well students are meeting the course objectives.
Asynchronous learning gives students the opportunity to learn from anywhere and at any time. While this can be scary for someone designing or teaching their online course, remember that with a few modifications to your existing course materials, taking your course fully online can be a rewarding experience. Engagement, communication, and community all look different in the online classroom, but, by using some of the tools discussed here, you can continue making meaningful connections with your students.
References
- Clinefelter, D. L. & Aslanian, C. B., (2016). Online college students 2016: Comprehensive data on demands and preferences. Louisville, KY: The Learning House, Inc.
