Quick Tips for Effectively Teaching Undergraduates Online
In an ever-changing educational landscape, we as educators do all we can to stay up-to-date on the latest technology and best practices. Over the past few years, many of us have bolstered our online teaching practices in response to the many changes we have faced. I’ve recently taken professional development courses with the City University of New York (CUNY), The Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) and Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), to name a few. I’m here to share with you my biggest takeaways from those learning experiences.
Here they are!
Make your online course equitable and accessible. Think about your students who struggle the most. Design the course for them. Build in a safety net so students won’t slip through the cracks, and make sure Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is at the core of every choice you make in your classroom and curriculum. If you design in a way that supports all students, including the marginalized students, you’re being equitable and setting students up for success.
Keep things organized, and easy to find. Your syllabus, schedule of assignments, assignment descriptions and grade center should be located in a conspicuous spot where students can access it easily. Encourage your students to bookmark frequently used course materials.
Communicate with your students in between sessions, even if it just means sending a quick snapshot of an artwork you saw over the weekend at the museum, or sending a reminder about an upcoming deadline. Some professors even host optional office hours where online students can informally gather online and talk about classwork.
Automate what you can. There is no need to manually grade 100 multiple choice exams. Take advantage of the online format and let your computer do some of the work so you can focus on interacting with students.
Your content doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be authentic. The nice thing about the online classroom is that it is truly infinite, and you can bring content in from a variety of sources. Get creative when recording your lectures. For example, my lecture on 20th-century abstract painting could take place in the park, while I walk around and show students examples of repetition and pattern in nature. Then, I can show them slides of artists who have made abstractions based on patterns like the ones we saw in the park.
Learn about your students’ interests and backgrounds. Find out why they are taking the class, and why online. Use these conversations as a springboard for making deeper connections with them.
Think about gendered language in your classroom. A small percentage of your students will be LGBTQ+, and they deserve to be supported and affirmed in your class. While the overwhelming majority of students are not LGBTQ+, you should support those who are and foster a culture of allies. I identify with the gender I was born with and I am straight. I don’t know what it is like to live in a world where I am told I’m wrong for being a straight woman. I imagine it would be devastating, since ‘straight’ and ‘woman’ are huge parts of my identity. I’m not about to tell someone they are wrong for being who they are, and I’m certainly not going to do that in my classroom. It’s easy to ask students to share their preferred pronouns at the beginning of the term. Some students might not want to share and that’s fine too. No one is being forced to do anything. As educators, we’re sort of supposed to be like really good parents, supporting our ‘kids’ as they become who they are meant to be.
Encourage collaboration whenever possible. Students might feel awkward about getting to know their classmates in an online environment. Most people don’t have much experience meeting strangers in a Zoom call and becoming friends with them! Facilitate activities that will help students get to know one another and encourage them to study together outside of class.
These are my notes and tips for now. As I take more courses in the coming weeks/months/years/lifetime(!), I will add more notes. Thank you for reading, and I hope some of this helps you along in your courses.