Key Practices for Online Teaching

As you prepare to teach online, it’s important to get organized and ensure that every aspect of the course is designed with clarity and intentionality. Consider how you will promote students’ success and learning, and align those with the course site and components.

Design your course site. Your course site offers students a first impression. It displays how you’ve organized the course and which aspects you find most significant.

Organize your syllabus. Your syllabus accomplishes similar goals. We all know syllabi are underappreciated, but they are still a key resource for holding every detail about the way you’ve designed the course. Review and finalize it to ensure that if students have a question, they’ll find it in the syllabus!

Set your tone. It can be very impactful to begin the semester with inclusive teaching practices that encourage students to participate from the start.

• Introduction forum: Before the course begins, introduce yourself in an introductory discussion thread and then ask students to follow suit. This allows them to get to know you and begin to learn about peers taking the course.
• Student identity: Offer opportunities for students to share their identities and pronouns. Although you can prompt an introduction in a forum, you can also show students how to change their preferred name on the course site. You can also encourage them to include a picture that they feel best represents them on the course site and Zoom.

Without a doubt, instructor presence plays a huge role in supporting student success in online learning. You can be present in your course by posting regular announcements, providing feedback, and publicly engaging in their conversations. The more often students notice you throughout their online learning experience, the more likely they’ll be active participants and seek support when they need it.

For more detailed information on how to establish and maintain your presence, check out the Instructor Presence Teaching Guide [Coming Soon].

You may be teaching an online synchronous or asynchronous course; Whichever the case, your time with students is limited. Online courses require explicit instruction and clear expectations at every step of the way.

Ensure that your syllabus is thorough and explicit. Create an in-depth and detailed syllabus that answers questions students might have related to course policies (i.e., late and attendance policies), assignment descriptions, learning goals, etc. It can also be helpful to note policies that are course- or department-specific since students can assume that policies are alike across the university system.

Communicate expectations and encouragement. Let students know why you have policies. Oftentimes, instructor policies are meant to help students set boundaries and create healthy work schedules; let your students in on why and how you’ve approached the course design. Remind students that you have high expectations, and that you also know they can meet them.

In any classroom, you want to ensure that students are communicating amongst each other, with you, and the course content. To facilitate students’ ability to communicate with each network, it’s important to provide multiple means to do so.

Student to Student: Offer opportunities for students to get to know one another and connect. This allows them to establish diverse points of contact in the event that they need support.

• Collaboration: Offer learning opportunities such as partner work, group projects, discussion boards, peer review, or social annotation.
• Drop-in hours: Host communal sessions that allow students to work together and with you.
• Community: If you’re hosting synchronous class sessions, include icebreakers and opportunities for students to work in breakout rooms.

Student to Faculty: Let students know how and when they can reach out to you. In other words, be transparent about your preferred communication modality and expected response time.

• Communication expectations: Students need explicit directions when it comes to contacting you. Be as clear about your communication preferences on your syllabus and on the first day of class. For example, if you do not anticipate responding after a certain time or on weekends, let them know when they can expect to hear back from you.
• Drop-in hours: Establish sessions where students can ask questions and receive support. Explain what they can expect when they stop by.
• Communication clarity: Explain how your different modes of communication function. For example, it can be helpful to clarify when you’ll use an announcement via your course LMS, when you’ll send emails, and how they should expect to receive your feedback.

Student to Course: Guide students through your course site. Course sites are much like the syllabus — they have all the answers, but are often overlooked. Show students how you’ve organized the site and how each aspect of the course is there to support their success in the course and their time at UIC.

• Orientation video: Create a video tutorial of the course site to ensure that students interpret it the way you intended. Show them how to navigate the organization so that they’re able to find course materials and assignment submissions.

• Course bulletin board: Design a community space where you post helpful information, both related and unrelated to the course. This can be a space where you and students share upcoming campus events or resources that may be helpful.
• Campus resources: Provide quick access to relevant resources that can support your students. It can be helpful to cater specific resources to your students’ identities (such as lower versus upperclassmen). UIC also provides an overview of Current Student Resources that shows up-to-date student support services that can be helpful!

When teaching online, we recommend you take advantage of the many ways you can provide greater student autonomy, varied learning experiences, and scaffolded approaches to teaching course content.

Offer students choices. Students are more likely to invest time and effort toward assignments for which they’re able to have a personal connection or can identify a meaningful impact. It can be helpful to have major assignments or projects in which students choose a specific topic to learn more about.

Design solo, partner, and group work. Online learning can feel isolating for all parties in the course. It’s important to embed opportunities for students to work with others in the course so that they can learn from each other and practice key collaboration skills. If you want to avoid the hassle of online group work, don’t forget to leverage interactions through discussion boards or collaborative writing projects via ed tech tools like Google Docs.

Scaffold learning content. Although we can promote communication, it’s likely that students will spend more time working through course content alone. Because of this, you want to ensure that you’re breaking down course content into bite-sized learning. Check out CATE’s Backward Design Teaching Guide to learn more about scaffolding your course.

Your feedback is perhaps the most important aspect of the course that students appreciate. This is because it provides a sign of their grade, opportunities for improvement, and a direct line of communication with you! Feedback is also a key factor in encouraging students to delve deeper into their learning and further develop their thinking and skills. Walk them through practicing metacognition!

Clarify your feedback practices. Be transparent about how and when students will receive feedback, as well as in which ways. Perhaps feedback for a low-stakes assignment means simply assigning a grade, while extensive feedback is given for major assignments.

Offer synchronous feedback. If you’re able, offer synchronous feedback opportunities. This can be done by hosting live synchronous office hours or setting up a time to chat face-to-face.

Provide metacognitive feedback. Metacognition is the practice through which we learn about our learning. For students, this can be especially helpful in guiding them through their thought process and assessing whether their approach to learning is working or not. Your feedback can significantly help walk them through this process by ensuring that you:

1. Acknowledge (in)correct answers.
2. Elaborate on correctness.
3. Provide a correct example.
4. Connect to course content.

Build in diverse feedback practices. It can be both meaningful and impactful to introduce students to the different ways feedback is given and discuss the significance of receiving advice from diverse perspectives. Besides receiving feedback from you, consider offering opportunities for self-evaluation and peer review. Self-evaluation further supports students’ metacognitive development by encouraging them to self-assess and identify areas for improvement. Peer review can promote collaborative learning and give students autonomy throughout the learning process.

Academic integrity is often an unexplained expectation for students, or is equated with no-cheating policies. Take preventative measures by discussing with your students what it means to have academic integrity and why it’s vital for their success in your course and beyond. Because students look toward instructors as experts, be sure to model academic integrity by providing citations on your own materials as well as showing them how to cite in your discipline’s preferred style.

Create an academic integrity policy. This policy should be holistic and clear, such that students know exactly what they should and should not do to jeopardize their grade. For online learning, it’s especially relevant to include a statement on how and if they should use any form of AI.

Differentiate between academic integrity and plagiarism. It can be helpful to frame academic integrity as an honest approach to learning that leads to genuine success. Plagiarism refers to submitting another’s work as one’s own. The difference is key, especially when students are not aware of how to avoid plagiarism!

Welcome students’ originality and authenticity. With the increasing use of AI, it can be highly impactful to let students know how much you appreciate their original ideas and authentic voices. You can build these opportunities by letting them connect course content to their life experiences, as well as creating a space where failure is encouraged and understood as a part of learning. Consider incorporating activities such as free-writes, reaction papers, or reflective moments.