Students in a computer lab looking at screens.

Introduction

Successful teaching online means teaching your students how to be effective online learners. Much of this instruction happens early in the course and then gets repeated throughout the semester. A successful online learner is a student who:

  • Practices time management
  • Engages with online discussions
  • Applies material being learned rather than memorizes
  • Asks questions about the material 
  • Is self-motivated
  • Engages with instructor
  • Engages with peers

How can you cultivate these skills and attitudes? You may find it useful to actually talk with students about attitude and engagement from the outset of the course.

Framework for Effective Online Learning

Being an Effective Online Learner Depends on Effective Engagement

Online engagement is social, cognitive, behavioral, collaborative, and emotional. In practice, cultivating that engagement can mean:

Fostering social engagement by inviting students to get to know each other, forming ways of communicating outside of official class channels, and asking students to share something about themselves or their university lives.

Fostering cognitive engagement by creating tools for students to self-assess and receive feedback and applying the principles of objective based teaching.

Fostering behavioral engagement by departing from your usual lecture format (shorter usually makes for better engagement!), giving quizzes, using discussion forums, and offering lots of video conferencing opportunities.

Fostering collaborative engagement by encouraging students to connect with and learn from each other and helping students get connected to university resources.

Fostering emotional engagement by combating the isolation that can be characteristic of online learning. Communicate regularly, and be clear about when you’re available to answer questions. 

Scaffolding Activities and Assignments

Effective scaffolding, rooted in Lev Vygotsky’s (1978) Zone of Proximal Development theory, can be extremely valuable. Many students’ tendency toward procrastination (which can lead to failure) is related to feelings of uncertainty or perceived inability to do well. Effective scaffolding can help prevent that. 

Building Rapport Between Instructor and Student

Rapport building between professors and students results in “significantly lower attrition and significantly higher grades.” In fact, students themselves highlight the importance of their relationship with their instructor: “Qualitative student comments identify the high-rapport relationship with the instructor as a key factor in student success. Thus, rapport building represents a simple, instructor-driven intervention that can significantly improve online retention and grades.” This author’s methods included using “video updates, personal e-mails, and personalized electronic comments on assignments.” For example, use first names frequently when providing comments on student work.

Instructors can also be proactive about working with students to manage stress as a way of building resilience.

Orient Students and Develop a Structure and Routine

Part of helping students to be effective online learners means fostering a common learning experience. Get students used to a particular structure by creating a routine, in terms of schedule and deadlines. Orient students by taking time to clearly define your role and your students’ role(s). Show students where to find relevant info and materials in the online learning space. Offer different methods of communication, and survey students to find out their communication preferences.

Flexibility and Repetition

Flexibility is key: be willing to be flexible about deadlines and allow students rewrites and other “redos.” You may also consider being flexible about how much work you grade, offering students lots of opportunities to do ungraded work.

In that vein, repetition is also important, whether you’re teaching in person or online. If you teach something once and never return to it, students won’t retain it. For example, if you’re teaching about advanced punctuation, have students do a worksheet, go over the worksheet, encourage them to study for a quiz a couple weeks later, deliver the quiz, go over the quiz, and then offer reminders when they make mistakes in later writing. 

Setting students up for success online includes being attuned to inclusivity, accessibility, and student trauma

As educator Jesse Stommel notes, online learning depends on building a meaningful learning community, and developing that community means “acknowledg[ing] trauma that members of our community have and will experience” and “creat[ing] a sense of belonging.” Among other strategies, instructors can “ask genuine, open-ended questions, wait for answers, let conversation wander, model what it looks like to be wrong and to acknowledge when we’re wrong, recognize that the right to speak isn’t distributed equally, [and] make listening visible.”

Activities, Tips, & Tools

Things to do (early) in the course:

  • Before the course: survey asking about student needs, experience, expectations, and needed accommodations. Here’s a sample survey and here’s another.
  • First week: have students do a very low-stakes assignment and then schedule individual meetings to discuss/meet students within the first two-ish weeks of the semester.
    • Assignment could be a goals plan with a weekly schedule template
  • Self-assessment is a useful tool throughout the semester: “One effective technique is to require students to conduct a self-assessment of their writing assignments prior to submission; this type of self-assessment builds valuable metacognitive skills (Zhao et al. 2014).” Quizzes in your LMS can also be an effective tool for this.
  • Embed prominent links to campus support services on the LMS, such as the Writing Center or accessibility services.
  • Encourage students to set up a workspace and discuss the importance of organizational skills
  • Design assignments in a scaffolded way, so students don’t procrastinate because they have small pieces due each week.
  • Structure your weeks to create a routine for students: for example, send an announcement on Sunday, check in on Wednesday, have everything due at the same time each week.

Help students become effective online collaborators

Some strategies for setting students up to work effectively in groups online include:

  • Just as you will make an effort to create instructor presence, give students opportunities to introduce themselves and get to know each other. You could:
    • Create an introductions forum, where students can introduce themselves and include pictures of themselves, if they wish
    • Make groups early enough that there’s time for students to get to know each other and complete the assignment
    • Help students connect with each other, either within the LMS or through other channels, like text chains, WhatsApp, etc. You may even consider requiring a non-LMS tool for collaboration
  • Be transparent about the purpose of the assignment, with a lot of explanatory material, even more than you’d give if you were teaching in person.
  • Create small groups: the ideal group size is 3 to 4 students.
  • As the instructor, be proactive in terms of arranging sessions to offer help, such as setting up multiple video conferences over the duration of the project.

Timed work and work session timers to help with focus

The Pomodoro Technique, which encourages you to work in 25-minute bursts, with 5 minute breaks. Each of these 30 minute blocks is a “pomodoro session”; after 4 sessions, you get a 20 to 30 minute break.

In that vein, this work session timer facilitates using shorter or longer work sessions, which can be helpful for people with attention issues or who are dealing with especially complex topics, respectively. Some refer to time spans of varying lengths as “pebbles,” “stones,” and “boulders.” All of them will build you a wall if you keep doing them.