Principal Reference: R.M. Felder and R. Brent, Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide, 2nd edn. (2024), Chapter 7. <https://educationdesignsinc.com/book/>.
Teaching online has become increasingly common in recent decades, and while the quality of the available technology has steadily improved and no systematic student performance differences have been found between face-to-face and online courses, students’ and instructors’ complaints about their online learning experiences are still common. We heard a number of them recently in a Zoom-based webinar on teaching online we gave to an audience of engineering professors. This post summarizes their questions and our responses.
The first thing we did in the presentation was to review the principal modes of instruction, beginning with the traditional classroom:
- Face-to-face (F2F): Instructor teaches students in the same room.
- Synchronous online: Students view and interact with instructors online in real time.
- Asynchronous online: Students view recorded lectures and interact with online simulations and quizzes.
- Flipped classroom: New material is introduced asynchronously online, followed by a face-to-face active learning-based review of the material.
We conducted a poll regarding the instructors’ use of online instruction and learned that most of them had either taught synchronously online or with flipped classrooms and a smaller number had taught asynchronously online. For each of the online modes we had them submit questions in Chat, and we answered some of the questions synchronously. After the webinar we integrated essentially redundant questions (including those we had no time to answer online), wrote out our answers, and prepared and distributed a handout summarizing the results. The summary is reproduced below.
Q1: What can I do to make my synchronous online class more effective?
A1: Our main suggestion is the same as our primary suggestion for F2F classes—get the students actively engaged! They should be engaged with one another (e.g., using polls, breakout rooms, submissions to Chat, and team assignments) and with you (e.g., introduce yourself in the first class session, and announce virtual office hours during which you will be available online to respond to their questions). If you hold office hours, always be sure either to be there for them or to announce schedule changes when you can’t.
Several of you had good additional suggestions, including using whiteboards, Miro (a whiteboard-based platform for team communication and project management), Kahoot (an app that can be used to convert lessons to interactive games), and Mentimeter (an app for generating polls).
Q2: How can I ensure that students are paying attention to me in synchronous online lessons?
A2: You can’t even ensure it for all students in a face-to-face classroom, much less in an online class. However, just as in a F2F class, if you get the students actively engaged you will significantly increase their attention level. You can increase it even more by not always calling for volunteers to report their responses when you stop activities—sometimes call on students randomly. (There may be some initial grumbling, but after the first two or three class sessions it will stop.) Most students don’t want to admit failure after they have had time to work with others to answer a question, and discovering that they could be called on to respond after any activity will focus their attention on the activity dramatically.
Q3: What can I do to make my asynchronous online class more effective?
A3: Many of the same things you do for synchronous online learning—the key is getting students actively engaged. Get them engaged with one another (e.g., with discussion boards and team assignments) and with you (e.g., introduce yourself in an introductory video, hold virtual office hours, and respond online to their online questions). Also, make sure the asynchronous lessons are interactive (e.g., with interactive simulations and quizzes on content of readings and videos that provide feedback on the students’ responses), and not just readings and long recorded lectures that make students only passive observers of the information.
Q4: What can I do in virtual office hours?
A4: Since virtual office hours are synchronous, you can do the same things you do in traditional office hours: answer the students’ questions, examine their work to find out where they need guidance, give them advice about how to prepare effectively for tests (answer questions and solve problems without looking at the answers and solutions, and when you get stuck, look at the answers and solutions and try again several hours or days later), and give them encouragement when they are struggling.
Q5: How can I obtain and maintain personal bonding with students in an online class?
A5: See responses A1–A4.
Q6: Should I integrate virtual reality into my teaching?
A6: When simulations (such as simulations of lab experiments or control rooms) are interactive, the more realistic they are, the more likely the students are to be prepared if and when the actual situations occur. Virtual reality promotes this outcome. The increased learning must be balanced against the cost of purchasing and maintaining visual reality equipment: the more important the simulations are in the curriculum, the easier it becomes to justify the cost.
Q7: What can I do when many students in flipped classrooms don’t complete assignments before coming to class?
A7: Count the assignment grades enough so that if students repeatedly fail to complete or even attempt the assignments it will affect their course grade. If the assignments include online activities and quizzes, you can easily keep track of students’ completion rates and grades.
Q9: How can I make flipped classrooms effective?
A9: Actively engage the students in both the online assignments (see Response A3) and the face-to-face class session (see Chapter 6 of Teaching and Learning STEM). Avoid the two most common mistakes in flipping classrooms: (1) Don’t make online assignments just reading textbooks and watching recorded lectures; (2) Don’t make class sessions just traditional lectures on different content.
