It’s Friday afternoon and your Chair just walked into your office and told you on Monday the university is shutting its doors and all courses are going online. After you start breathing again, you realize you don’t know the first thing about putting a class online. What are you going to do? Here are the top five things you need to know to get up and running.
- It doesn’t have to be perfect, just practical.
Nobody expects you to have a complete online course built in a weekend. It is simply not possible. Instead, focus on one thing at a time. What do your students need to know versus what is nice to know?
Identify those items in your lesson which are mission critical.
What pages in the chapter readings do they need to have?
What videos might you use as a substitute for lecture?
What assignments or tests do they need to complete? - Don’t recreate your lectures online.
Believe it or not, students don’t need to see you talking for 1.5 hours in a video. It is equally effective for you to record and upload a 10 minute video covering the key points of the lesson and supplementing the material with carefully selected videos, articles, and other resources. The most effective video length is between 5-7 minutes in order to retain audience attention span. - How will you communicate with your students?
Communication is key in any online environment, but especially in an online class. What is your plan for keeping your students informed about school events, classroom events, assignments?
One way to effectively reach out to students is through the Announcements tool in your school’s LMS. It will send an email announcement to each student at their school email address and/or their personal email if they have forwarded it.
Another way to effectively reach students is to schedule regular “office hours” each week in order to answer questions and address any questions or concerns students may have about assignments. You can use free software such as Zoom or your school’s LMS to conduct these meetings. - How will you receive student work?
Students will need to turn in assignments. If you are familiar with the school’s LMS, there should be some way to upload assignments there. The advantage to uploading assignments to the LMS is that there is a time stamp and a backup of the work in case something gets ‘lost in translation’. If you are not familiar with the LMS or your institution does not have one, email is another method of receiving assignments. Ask your students to include the course number in the subject line to make it easier to sort your mail (e.g., COMM1301 – Speech #1). - One step at a time.
In addition to keeping things simple and practical, remember you do not have to have everything done at one time. A good rule of thumb is to stay one week ahead of your students with content so you can have time to curate any videos, articles, or other resources you need.