Transition to online teaching

Transition to online teaching

Face-to-face teaching is the standard at NHH. This way it’s possible to have live interaction between students and faculty.

The series of lectures during the semester also helps the student to organise the week and keep up with the learning process.

Yet, taking a class in person does not always guarantee that someone will be more focused or successful. Neither do online learning, even though our students are digital natives and are used to consume online content. Some research have shown that learning outcomes for online learners are comparable to traditional students. Many top universities now offer online courses as well as traditional classes.

How will your classroom-teaching strategies translate to the virtual world, and how could you incorporate new ideas? Traditionally, classroom teaching has often involved the introduction of concepts and skills, guided practice by the teacher, individual practice by students until the skill or concept is mastered. Other strategies include problem solving methods, case based teaching etc. Online teaching removes access to certain teaching methods, but it opens up a number of new possibilities. Some of them you may bring back to your physical classroom next semester. Students are likely to be more forgiving of missteps these days.

Effective online teachers are present within their course

When learning online, many students will benefit of knowing they have an instructor who cares and is there to support them. Effective online teachers are presence in the course and perhaps one-on-one with students. More interactions with students enhance a community based on trust, which is important for learning.

If you go online with your lectures, don’t expect to master everything on the first day. You will learn fast, and your students will learn even faster. You may even want to recognize this fact explicitly with your students, and ask them how to engage with the technology for your particular course. What works well and what could be improved?

You have to consider whether or not your lectures should be recorded in advance or be live. Live online monologue sessions will sometimes be perceived as less interesting. I that case, perhaps you should consider creating a shorter instructional video instead. For a live online class, introduce the learning material as much unpredictability and novelty as you can. It’s not always necessary to share the presentation in advance. You may use surprising questions, groups, and small activities (5 minutes writing, problem solving, videos, or shared documents, for example) to break up the monotony. Offer breaks if you go past 45 minutes. For group work, Zoom offers nice break up rooms. Kaahot and Socrative may be used to activate the students for team based learning inspired activities.

You might consider guidelines regarding communication with students towards the exam by arranging weekly Q&A for the whole group or use video to meet with each student individually.

Develop collaboration among students

Students should have an opportunity to work together, to share and to discuss. This would benefit all of the students involved in the course, especially those without informal networks in place.

Set up chats and discussion forums that encourage students to communicate with one another. The teacher may be present in the forums or not. Consider Q&A sessions online instead of or in addition to streaming lectures. This enhances a more social environment, and may reduce the isolationist climate that exists with every student home alone.

Fast and meaningful feedback

Students benefit when teachers provide meaningful feedback. It should help them in their further studies. Make sure that you have an email / chat response policy. When students email you or send you a message, when can they expect a response? It’s not advised to leave students wondering how they did – on a project, a paper or on an exam or through the whole semester. Quick feedback keeps students engaged in their learning and in the coursework to come. This is perhaps even more important in an online environment where there is no face-to-face interaction between student and faculty.

You may as well consider peer feedback. Are there methods to let the students help each other instead? Student-to-student sharing of completed mandatory (or not m.) assignments provides motivation and encourages peer discussions. Students may like the non-competitive atmosphere that reduces their individual stress in an online cooperative learning environment.

Active teaching - online

Active learning is an activity in a course that goes beyond passively listening to a lecture or a seeing a video. It should challenge students to engage. Take advantage of interactivity. Online technologies can encourage and facilitate more “lean forward” behaviours than the traditional classroom.

Incorporating active learning into online teaching may include well-conceived discussion, synchronous online meetings, cooperative group work, “flipping” classrooms, informal assessments, and problem-based learning assignments or activities. One could  try to surface questions that students have around the material, using polls to get a sense of the aggregate “temperature” of the room, inviting students’ answers on particular questions, having students engage in small “buzz group” conversations or “cold calling”

Hold on to clear deadlines and consistent patterns of course activities to help students manage busy schedules and encourage regular communication. 

High expectations

Even in these online teaching times, hold on to high expectations established through challenging assignments, discussions, and examples of good work. Have clear expectations that student participate in discussions and do their part.

 

Newly developed resources on online teaching: