- Keep your "virtual classroom" organized to make so that it makes sense for students.
- Have a single, dedicated hub where students can go daily to find their assignments and important announcements.
- Create and share a simple communication plan to let students know how and when they can contact you.
- Consider leading "learn your technology" days to help students learn how to turn in assignments and other tasks like signing in to synchronous lessons.
- Articulate clear, concise directions for students and consider making a short daily screencast video to communicate your expectations and work flow.
- Chunk your lessons into smaller, digestible pieces.
- Online materials require a large cognitive load for students to process...a learner can only deal with a few concepts simultaneously.
- If you record and share your lectures with students, instead of recording an entire lecture, consider creating several smaller ones that focus on a single key idea. The sweet spot for instructional videos should be around 6 minutes to ensure that students' attention doesn't wane.
- Alternate between high- and low- intensity activities to give students time to process material and consider incorporating "brain breaks" into your instructional time.
- Solicit feedback from students.
- In a face-to-face class, you can rely on visual cues and body language to determine if your students are engaged in a lesson. Not so in an online classroom where students may or may not have their cameras turned on.
- Regularly gather feedback from students on various aspects of your online class to identify what is working and what is not.
- Some sample questions to consider:
- Are you having any technical problems?
- Are you able to quickly find and submit your work?
- Is the virtual classroom easy to navigate?
- Annotate and interject to scaffold learning.
- In a face-to-face class, it is easy to interject to point something out to students (i.e. locations on a map or information on a slide). Not so in an online classroom.
- Try using simple annotations like arrows and text labels to provide visual scaffolding to help direct students' attention and guide the cognitive process.
- Strategically interject questions into an instructional video at key points to check for understanding (Edpuzzle can help with this).
- Assign frequent, low stakes quizzes.
- Low- and no-stakes practice tests enhance retention (i.e. Kahoot or similar learning games).
- Connect with your students.
- You will need to make a special effort to create a sense of community in your virtual classroom to lay the foundation for engagement and learning.
- Communicate more regularly and more informally with your students.
- Demonstrate that you are personally interested and invested in each student.
- Some strategies to consider:
- Use unstructured time to chat at the beginning of class.
- Try using Zoom's "waiting room" feature wo welcome kids to class one-by-one.
- Use breakout rooms to split students into small groups for "ice breaker" activities and other relationship-building exercises.
- At the end of a lesson, ask students to reflect on their learning with discussion prompts or exit tickets.
- Pose fun questions like "what is your favorite movie" and have students share using digital tools like Jamboard or Padlet.
- Take care of yourself!
- "You can't serve from an empty cup!"
Check out the full article from Edutopia.
