Become a Teacher

To get us all on the same page, below is an article that outlines a framework will use to consider the various aspects of implementing an online discussion in your course. In the article, the author outlines four roles that help categorize most of the work performed by an online instructor: Pedagogical, Social, Managerial & Technical. It’s often the case that instructors implement an online discussion for reasons encompassed by the pedagogical and/or social role. However, it’s important to consider that all four dynamics are at play. The Role of the Online Instructor Let’s now look at the four roles in a bit more detail and discuss some of the main instructional objectives and/or considerations that fall under each role: Pedagogical Role – Create discussions that focus energy on critical concepts, principles, and skills. Key considerations: Develop questions that suit your course goals and help students think critically. Develop questions that provide room for students to personalize their post in a way that encourages responses from peers. Explore the various ways in which instructor participation can help or hinder a discussion. Be attentive to assessment and targeted assessment strategies that best parallel the design of your online discussion. There are a number of ways to address these key considerations. First, you can make efforts to integrate the online discussion and the in-class time as much as possible so that students understand and benefit from both environments. You might also use the discussion board as a source for in-class lecture/discussion topics, and mine the discussion for concepts that aren’t clear and need to be rediscussed in class. Also consider replacing some existing assignments in your syllabus in order to account for the time spent in online discussions. Finally, assessment is one aspect of online discussions that spans the pedagogical and managerial roles. On the front end, developing an assessment strategy forces thorough consideration of pedagogical goals. Then, as implementation begins, assessments rubrics become an important managerial tool for both students and instructors (see managerial role for more details). These articles and resources explore more pedagogical elements of online discussions: Discussion Prompts – This article comes from a repository of blended learning resources by the University of Central Florida. It provides useful guidelines for constructing good discussion prompts. Notice the many helpful examples. Cognitive Question Prompts – Use this chart to help develop discussion question that align with your instructional goals. The chart also provides useful prompts for facilitators to use in keeping discussion going. Questioning Styles for More Effective Discussion Roles – This short article offers ideas for aligning pedagogical goals with various types of discussion prompts. Social Role – Foster a friendly, social environment to promote learning and sharing Key considerations: Focus on cultivating student participation in this online environment; be precise and clear with your students about what type and level of participation this should be. Integrate online and in-class discussions, topics, and responses as much as possible to streamline course content. Promote community building, with you and your students and amongst your students. Define and enforce expectations for language, interactions, and online interpersonal communication. How can we address these considerations? First, we can encourage students to reply to each others’ questions, to work in teams, and to report back to class with information from the online discussion. We can also post rules and model behavior for the type of interactions that you expect (how formal, informal, etc.) and what type of etiquette accompanies these. Allow students enough time to digest, reflect, and produce their own analytical responses and thoughts. As mentioned above, grade for participation, and encourage those who don’t talk as much in class to participate more online. Review these articles to dig deeper into the social dimension of online discussions: Building An Online Learning Community – In this article, the author presents two learning community cases studies and offers a roadmap for how to enhance the social dimension of an online community. Online Learning Communities Revisited – This article was developed for the UW Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning. It briefly examines learner satisfaction and learning outcomes in relation online learning communities. It also outlines several elements of community and how they work together to sustain a cooperative environment. Managerial Role – Clarify discussion objectives, timelines, and procedural rules Key considerations: Ensure students have the right skills and information to participate fully. Establish a rhythm for your discussion by thoughtfully timing deadlines for initial posts and responses. Communicate clear and consistent expectations to the students. Define ground rules for respectful interactions. To do this, establish an FAQ section about course procedures, expectations, discussion rules, and other likely administrative questions. By doing this in the course site itself and in a discussion forum, you can respond to questions that might come up over and over again in a space that is visible to the whole class, avoiding the need to address each similar question on an individual basis. This will also be a way to provide examples of good posts, model expectations for language and style of posts. We can include detailed guidelines and rubrics on how the posts will be assessed and make these accessible on the course site. To manage your time as an instructor (and therefore to manage the discussion more easily), set up online office hours or a time block during which you’ll be active in the discussion forums when you can facilitate the threads and respond to student questions. In line with replacing other assignments in your syllabus to allow for more student focus on the online discussions (as mentioned under the pedagogical role), consider requiring a “discussion portfolio” semester-long assignment that students would be required to curate and submit. This puts many of the discussion responsibilities and management on the students and requires them to be acutely aware of the expectations of the discussion threads/posts in order to hand in a “good” portfolio. Review these articles to further investigate the managerial role of online discussions: Assessment Rubrics: As mentioned above, assessment is an element that spans the managerial and pedagogical role. Rubrics are the manifestation of pedagogical planning, but in practice they help clearly communicate expectations to students and allow the instructor to assess in a consistent way and direct feedback to learners. Take a look at these examples: Discussion Rubric Sample 1 Discussion Rubric Sample 2 More examples from UCF Modeling expectations – This page provides a useful example of how one professor thoroughly models posting expectations. Technical Role – Make students comfortable with the learning management system, tools, and software Key considerations: Review key features of UW supported online discussion tools, including the Learning Management System [LMS]. Consider various options for student training and support, like campus-supported student training sessions, Lynda.com, or other distributed training resources. Equip students with a detailed guide of how to access the online discussion tool and a backup plan for what to do in case of an outage. Briefly explain the function and purpose of the online discussion space/tool and its role in the course (either in person in your first class or on the syllabus) so that you get buy-in from the students. The technological role can be especially tricky both because we often assume (wrongly!) that this generation of students is well informed and equipped enough to work with any online learning tool, and because it is impossible to plan for every possible technical glitch that might pop up. In order to help navigate this role, we offer as much support in advance of the first post/discussion as we can. Provide instructions online or as a handout that explain how to access the course discussion site. Keep these instructions simple, and to the extent possible, link all navigation through one main course site to streamline any navigation for your students; if you use multiple learning management tools or systems in your course (for the discussions or for the course as a whole), funnel these links and access points through one main course portal. Walk through the process of how to access the online discussions and post to them during class, on your own with your student or with the help of STT (Student Technology Training) or another UW campus resource. Lastly, create a training resource page on the course site that lists ways for students to find support and referrals to on-campus support services.

Launching online classes for your learners require expertise in information technology, software development and design. Hence, if you are wondering how to start online classes without having those skills If you have never launched a course online, the whole process might seem a little intimidating to you. From researching your competitor to approaching your target audience and creating a course which sells, there is just so much to do. Rather than feeling lost and wondering how to proceed, follow this step by step guide. Table of Contents Step by step process on how to start online classes Step 1: To start online classes define your training goals Step 2: Outline your online classes Step 3: Build your online course content Information Source Gather Developed Content Organise Update Step 4: Engage your target learners Step 5: Measure the engagement metrics Conclusion Step by step process on how to start online classes In today’s world, technology is the last thing you need to worry about. There are various tools and platforms to help you out with that aspect. Read: Types of platform used by course creators. This article would be more focused on the overview of content creation. Step 1: To start online classes define your training goals The purpose of launching your online classes should be clear. Determine your business metric and the impact you want to create through the courses. If you are an established business you could be taking online classes for different purposes. For example, one of the reasons could be to train your clients about how to use certain tools. On the other hand, if you are into the education business, you could be launching online classes to teach students beyond the four walls. Get it clear in the first step itself. The three items you’ll need to define in the first step. Business goal: Define what are the financial and other growth outcomes you expect to bring into your business through your courses. Teaching Goal: Define the teaching goals behind the launch of your course. Whether to help your clients master a tool or to teach a subject or help your customers use your products better. Learning objectives: You need to clearly define what your learners will achieve by the end of the course. Step 2: Outline your online classes Divide the whole module into folders and sub-folders, containing topics and sub-topics. While planning out the whole module, keep in mind the learning objective. Keep yourself in the place of the learners and try to determine the flow of your course content that would be most effective. Plan out a combination of the form of content which would be more engaging. Our educators who create audiovisual content like videos or teach online live classes have apparently seen higher engagement. Once you are done with the module planning, establish a tentative delivery timeline for those content. Make sure you document them. Step 3: Build your online course content The real work comes into play at this step. You would start creating online course content at this step. However, the process need not be time-consuming. Information Source Put together all the information you have accumulated till the current date. Gather Developed Content Think thoroughly and gather the content you already have developed. All the PowerPoint presentations, digital copies, training manuals, pre-recorded videos, product demos, support articles or any other form of content must be placed together. Organise Now, it’s time to organize those pieces in a cohesive manner. Don’t get overwhelmed by the overabundance of files you have gathered. It could lead to distraction. Hence, keep your content precise. Select only those materials which are in alignment with your learning objectives. Update Now that your content is organized, determine the content you’ll need to update or develop from scratch. Record video content from your home. In order to address new active learners, try to engage in a diverse group of learning styles by creating all-inclusive curriculum. Step 4: Engage your target learners Now that you are done with the substantial part of creating online classes, it’s time to deliver it to your target audience. You have to plan on how to effectively deliver your course to your learners. The accessibility of your course is just as important as the content itself. If learners can’t access your course, they would never be able to see the course content. By “accessibility” we’re referring to a learner’s first encounter of the course. It could be the course link or landing page. Structure the process of discovering your course of buying them in a way which is easy to navigate and value-filled. You have many options to simplify online course access for your learners: Email the course access link Embed the link on your website Share the links on your social media channels. Include the link in products used by your learners. Send the course access link through a text. Provide the link in a chat channel Based on the type of course platform you choose, you should enable the above options to introduce the course to your audience. Step 5: Measure the engagement metrics Once the learners have purchased the online course, track their progress and other metrics in your dashboard. Usually, platforms like Spayee provide full-fledged sales dashboard to instructors. Measure the metrics. Use them for the course evaluation & feedback. Improve your course as you proceed. Take your first set of learners as the sample learners who will provide you with their input regarding the flow of the program. Whether the training progress is logical or whether they stumble at certain points during the online classes. Obtaining their feedback would enable you to perfect the program before its official launch. At this stage, if any technical glitches pop up, you can notify the service provider to get it rectified. If your mic didn’t work well or the video recording didn’t turn out to be smooth, you will have ample time to improvise and upload better content. Conclusion Use a white-label software and incorporate your own branding and design. Include your company’s logo and buy a domain name which is short and catchy. This will ensure that your online course platform presents a professional image. Once, you run through the five steps outlined in this post to start online classes, it will be increasingly easier for you to do the online course creation. Through the process, you would be able to gain tremendous insight into your target learners and their interest. Along with helping learners by providing online classes, you would also be able to achieve your business goals.