杏吧原创

When colleges and universities started to offer classes online during the 1990s, it was hailed as the future of learning, as many institutions rushed to offer distance learning using the power of the Internet. In those pioneering days, however, educators tried to just replicate the physical classroom with which they were familiar. While it was a praiseworthy idea, this approach often missed the point in terms of the unique challenges and opportunities that the online environment presented.

With the advent of the Coronavirus, instructors in colleges across the country, who are more used to teaching face-to-face, are now being required to teach online, many for the first time. As someone who has been in online education for over a decade, and who has taught on both sides of the Atlantic, I have a few useful pointers to offer to help you be a good online instructor:

1. Visible Presence 鈥� Students need to know that you are a daily and regular presence in the online classroom, and while that does not mean you have to be immediately available, you should be present in the announcements you make, the clarity of the feedback you give, and the prompt way you answer emails and other messages.
2. Context 鈥� Remember that your students are deprived of the body language that provides the nuance to your words in the physical classroom. While you do not need to exaggerate your words, remember that the praise you give, or the constructive criticism that you provide, will be conveyed through the written word alone. Be careful how you choose your words and structure your feedback. Read it back to yourself to see if the meaning you intended is the way the student is likely to interpret it.
3. Video 鈥� Video technology is ubiquitous and even the least expensive laptops have a webcam.听 Recording an initial video at the start of the course can provide a powerful way to connect with your students. Summarize the previous week鈥檚 lessons and provide an overview of what to expect for the week ahead but remember to offer a written version for accessibility purposes. Video feedback for assignments or at the mid-term can provide a powerful and personal connection to your students.
4. Be Flexible 鈥� A military student once apologized to me because he was unable to submit an assignment because the Taliban had 鈥渢aken out their communication tower.鈥� I did not hesitate to provide an extension. Now I am not suggesting that you will have students facing such extreme situations, but remember that someone working remotely may be facing multiple challenges, juggling home, family, and work, all while trying to complete their studies.
5. Offer Your Discipline Expertise 鈥� As an online instructor, it is often tempting to see your role as just grading assignments but be sure to add your disciplinary expertise and use current events; for example, show contemporary relevance of what you are teaching. While teaching a class in international economics recently, I was able to illustrate our discussions regarding NAFTA with the negotiations then taking place about the agreement.
6. Office Hours and Synchronous Learning 鈥� Be sure to advertise your availability with regularly posted office hours. Don鈥檛 forget to also use the opportunity for synchronous learning; if you do not have a dedicated learning management system, like Blackboard or Canvas, you can use freely available messaging platforms, like Skype or Zoom. Remember that not all your students will be able to attend a synchronous session, so use the recording option that platforms like Zoom and Skype offer and make it available to everyone after the session.
7. Be Inclusive 鈥� Remember that the online environment may cause those students who might normally shy away from interaction in the classroom easily hide. If students are posting in a discussion, try and ensure that you interact with everyone at some point. And if a student has not made a post, or submitted an assignment, reach out with a warm message to ask if everything is okay and offer help and guidance. While online learning can be an engaging and invigorating experience for many, it can be an isolating and friendless place for some.

These are just a few pointers from my years as an online instructor; there are many more. Overall, you should aim to be a visible and approachable presence in your classroom; someone who offers advice, support, and guidance to your learners, but also sensitive to the many challenges that the online learner may be facing. So, remember to customize your teaching and your assessments to such a unique environment. I hope this advice helps make your teaching experience as rewarding for you as it is for me, and hopefully it will be for your learners, too.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced schools to close and forced instructors to rethink how to teach. We are in a transformative period in education. We are experiencing a paradigm shift on how we will educate the next generation. For generations, courses were taught face-to-face. Soon, courses might be exclusively taught online.

I taught face-to-face courses for many years and then transitioned to teaching courses online. When schools cancelled their classes due to the COVID-19 outbreak, my former colleagues asked for my advice on how to teach their courses online. My four questions to them were these: How would you show presence in the course? What content would be provided? How would you engage the students? How would you assess the students?

To the instructor, I say, first, take a deep breath.听 Look on the bright side: You, the instructor, are an expert on the subject; you know what the students need to know. Technology is readily available. Think of this as an adventure from which you will gain experience in a new dimension, and learn and grow, and use your untapped creativity. Remember the end goal is the continuance of student learning during this disruption, and the completion of whatever pathway they were on.听 You, will serve your students by helping them keep up the P.A.C.E.听 Below, I provide a few tips about how you can enhance student learning, by showing Presence in the course, Assessing student learning of the Content, and helping our students achieve Excellence in the face of this national emergency.

Presence

Presence matters.听 Students need to know that you are in the course. Student -faculty connection is an important part of student achievement. We know that emotion and cognition are entangled. A daily mix of announcements, messages, or personal clips, on a variety of topics, readily achieve this goal. You can easily connect with students when you speak to them on their level.听 They will feel that you are there on the journey with them.

Assessment

Students need to demonstrate they have consumed the content. How will you know? This can be tricky.听 This is where you need to be creative. You are operating in a different dimension now. My classes include a mixture of automated quizzes and homework questions to test their knowledge of what was being discussed in class or in the readings.

Content

Make sure your course is interactive and interesting to engage your students and keep them wanting more. Be sure your lesson plan matches the syllabus so there鈥檚 no confusion, either. Allow for student choice topics and assignments, like picking to discuss current events. Mix it up. Students tend to participate and learn better when they have a choice or option. Find vlogs, videos, and websites that spark creative discussions. Use the free resources available to you via your institutions such as open educational resources, the library, career center, etc.

Excellence

When your course outline falls into place, everything else does, too. By creating interactive content, putting a successful assessment system in place, and being supportive of your students, you and your students can both succeed.

Due to the recent COVID-19 scare, many faculty have been quickly migrating in-person and hybrid courses to entirely online versions. I鈥檓 an ardent proponent for the use of rubrics, written guides for assessing student work, and in this blog post, I will provide some practical advice for individual faculty on how to incorporate grading rubrics into online courses.

Well-designed rubrics provide many benefits: they can help clarify performance expectations, encourage better student performance, provide students with better feedback on their work, and make grading more accurate, consistent, and efficient.

There are numerous types and categories of rubrics, but for our purposes here, we鈥檒l discuss how to create an analytic rubric to grade students鈥� work. Analytic rubrics document standards of student performance as a grid: the top row of the grid defines the performance levels, the left side of the grid vertically displays attributes of student work, and the boxes in between define student performance at each level. These boxes can be embedded in online courses and associated with specific assignments.

Linda Sukie identifies the following six steps to develop a rubric in her book, 鈥淗andbook on Measurement, Assessment, and Evaluation in Higher Education鈥�

Step 1: Identify the rubric鈥檚 purposes.

Rubrics are useful for assessing student performance on all different types of assignments or projects. However, if your assignment is focused on assessing students on their ability to recall information, a different type of assessment, such as a multiple-choice test, might be better.

听If you鈥檙e just now moving your course to an online version then it鈥檚 likely you will be seeking to utilize rubrics for evaluating student learning, an evaluation which will result in a grade. If so, ask yourself:

How much of a student鈥檚 grade will this assignment represent?

Step 2: Articulate clear learning outcomes for the assignment and explicate them into traits.

If you have already created an assignment, then what are the outcomes that you seek to assess with the rubric? What are attributes of these outcomes? For instance, if your outcome is to assess student writing, then you might identify a few key attributes of effective student writing on this assignment. 听

听List each attribute as a noun or noun phrase. Omit any attribute which is not essential to the assignment. List these attributes vertically along the left side of your grid.

Step 3: Identify and label performance levels.

The grid headings will list performance levels. I suggest utilizing between 3-5 levels for each attribute. For instance, if you have three levels then you might title them: below expectations, meets expectations, and above expectations.

You might associate points for each level. If so, then consider how you distribute these points. You might allocate more points to different attributes which are more essential to the goals of the assignment.

Step 4: Create descriptions of each trait, at each performance level.

During this step, faculty fill in each box in the grid for each attribute and performance level. Descriptions, ideally, provide students with specific information about how to improve weaknesses in their performance. These should be crafted according to your professional judgement. An easy place to start on this step is to articulate a description for minimally adequate performance on an attribute. Next, fill in the other performance levels.

Step 5: Develop or review the assignment.

Now that you鈥檝e drafted your rubric, look at the assignment prompt for students. Does it require students to perform work that is not identified in the rubric? If so, then it might be best to revisit the rubric to better articulate expectations.

Step 6: Test and revise the rubric.

Well-developed rubrics are typically developed iteratively over time. Before embedding a rubric in an online course, you might first test the rubric out on past student work. Once you have tested the rubric, consider how it might be improved; could the performance descriptions be clearer? Are the points allocated according to the most important attributes for the assignment? Finally, revise the rubric to make it more useful to provide students with a grade and feedback on their performance.

See the sample analytic rubric below worth 35 points on an assignment. It was created using the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Oral Communications VALUE Rubric.

听听

Table 1: Analytic Rubric Example

Oral Communication Value Rubric
Attributes	Above Expectations	Meets Expectations	Below Expectations	Points
Organization	Organizational pattern (specific introduction and conclusion, sequenced material within the body, and transitions) is clearly and consistently observable within the presentation.	Organizational pattern (specific introduction and conclusion, sequenced material within the body, and transitions) is intermittently observable within the presentation.	Organizational pattern (specific introduction and conclusion, sequenced material within the body, and transitions) is not observable within the presentation.	10
Language	Language choices are thoughtful and generally support the effectiveness of the presentation. Language in presentation is appropriate to audience.	Language choices are mundane and commonplace and partially support the effectiveness of the presentation. Language in presentation is appropriate to audience.	Language choices are unclear and minimally support the effectiveness of the presentation. Language in presentation is not appropriate to audience.	15
Delivery	Delivery techniques (posture, gesture, eye contact, and vocal expressiveness) make the presentation interesting, and speaker appears comfortable.	Delivery techniques (posture, gesture, eye contact, and vocal expressiveness) make the presentation understandable, and speaker appears tentative.	Delivery techniques (posture, gesture, eye contact, and vocal expressiveness) detract from the understandability of the presentation, and speaker appears uncomfortable.	10
Total	听	听	听	35

听

听Applying Your Rubric

Once these steps are complete, you are ready to use your rubric in a course. Learning Management System Communities are wonderful resources to provide information on how to embed rubrics into courses and assignments. For example, you might do a web search for 鈥淐anvas Community Rubrics,鈥� or 鈥淏lackboard Community Rubrics.鈥� These communities are a rich resource of information on many facets of the online teaching community. I have found community members to be extremely helpful with questions that arise about specific systems. For other inspiration, I suggest you also search for free rubric building tools online.

听

 

听

听