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Now is the time to plan for real online learning and teaching for the fall. That shouldn& #39;t be just repeating decisions under emergency circumstances for the Spring. With lead time, you can create courses that assume online and make the most of its affordances.
For starters, move beyond content delivery and testing to anchor your courses in types of interaction (student-content, student-student, and student-instructor). You can quickly articulate a plan for all three:
S-C: listening or reading (consuming) isn& #39;t cognitive engagement with the material. Where are instances in your course that students can apply, practice, generate, evaluate? What do you want them to DO with the content? Design to get them into ot up to their elbows.
S-I: How are you going to ensure they have regular opportunities to interact with you? Timely feedback and responsiveness to emails is usually a key for online. You can still do Zoom, but make them office hours or Q&A or virtual studio tours of work. And dedicate 1-2 hours a week
on your calendar to replying to discussion posts. Make it a mtg appointment on your calendar. You don& #39;t have to respond to everyone, just some targeted responses, then pull together a summary / kickoff email for the next week.
S-S: How are you going to support students connecting and collaborating with each other? Beyond discussions, what could they create together? Or perhaps do peer reviews. Provide a Zoom (or other) link to a room they can self-prganize to meet in much as they might the library.
Create a Q&A area for your course or program for students to post questions and reply to each other beyond just course content. Do small group live meetings for more focused support (I do this in classes where I take more of a studio approach).
These are just a few ideas, and I& #39;m weaving in evidence-based practices like practice and feedback as well but the framework will help you move past the common concerns about online and build an experience that& #39;s meaningful both for learning and for social interactions.
Summer and Fall online courses CAN be good, and they can be social and interactive. In fact, we know the more you tend to these types of interaction, the better the outcomes and satisfaction. So go! Imagine, design, create.
