Best Practices for Online Courses

Teaching Online

Best Practices

Though we have a complete training course for new online instructors, all instructors should be aware of what some of the best practices of effective online teaching and learning are as you prepare to teach some of your course in an online environment.

Build Community - Your online course will be a closed, yet hopefully close-knit community of learners. How well this works is up to the instructor. Work with your instructional designer to create activities that actively engage the students not only with you, but with the content and with each other. Some resources that may be helpful to understand the importance of community are listed below:

Start the course with a discussion where students introduce themselves. Ask for information they are willing to share and to post a photo, if they feel comfortable.
Post an ice breaker question to get them started conversing.
Advertise your communication plan which will inform students how and when you will communicate with them and how you welcome their questions.
Post announcements that ask questions and inform the students that they can reply directly to the announcement.
Offer optional virtual office hours.

Create and Maintain Instructor Presence - One of the biggest concerns with online students is about feeling isolated, not only from the other students but from the instructor as well. Build in ways for the student to feel your presence with frequent communication, participation in the discussions, announcements, and extensive feedback. Ask your instructional designer about creating videos for your classes. For more on the importance of instructor presence in an online course, the following articles may be helpful:

Provide Opportunities for Collaboration - In today's society, personally or professionally, it is rare that we work in a fully independent fashion. We are often asked to work directly with others to meet an end goal. Perhaps we are writing a proposal and we need input from the marketing department to understand the costs of a new campaign. Maybe, we are hosting a seminar, webinar, or event that is bringing together individuals of various backgrounds to learn about human rights or world events that will impact each of us.Regardless of the area of study, it is imperative that faculty provide students with opportunities for collaboration and use learning strategies that enable successful collaboration. Collaboration begins by providing opportunities for thought provoking, open-ended and challenging discussions or research based case-studies.

Student Collaboration in the Online Classroom Download Student Collaboration in the Online Classroom

Relevance of Learning - Students want to know why they are being asked to learn certain topics and how the learning will help shape their future. They want to know what it means to them, personally and professionally. Faculty have the key role of sharing the "why" to students as they are learning, both online and in the traditional classroom. As you teach online, it is essential that you share your professional experiences with your students and widen the global view of your students with your experiences.
Learning Transfer

One of Webster's Guiding Principles addresses Rigorous Academic Standards. The full-time faculty at Webster own the curriculum and drive the standards for excellence for teaching and learning.

Key to excellence is the use of learning strategies that help students to perform at higher cognitive levels.

Most often, these cognitive levels are discussed in reference to Bloom's Taxonomy. The taxonomy refers to a hierarchy of question stems that faculty use to guide their students through the learning process. When students are first being introduced to a new topic, teachers are able to use Bloom's Taxonomy to guide student learning from simple items (bottom of the pyramid) to more complex topics (top of the pyramid). Simply put, the levels of Bloom's build upon each other, at the top most level of the pyramid, you will naturally be using all lower levels. As student understanding grows and evolves, to where the student is able to make connections between topics and create new learning through experience, we travel to the top of the pyramid.

While each level of the pyramid is a valuable part of the learning process, it is essential that we provide opportunities for learning at all levels of the pyramid.