Teaching Online Best Practices

• Be accessible and responsive to your students and provide multiple means of contact (e.g., email, discussion forums, web-conferencing).
• Provide clear policies for communication in our courses, including when students should expect to get a response when they reach out to you.
• Make your contact information available in multiple places in our courses.

• Communicate extensively with students during the first weeks of the course to promote engagement.
  • Coordinators tend to send out announcements on a regular basis to keep students on task.
• Send updates and reminders about what is coming up in the course (e.g. deadlines, tips for assignments, etc.).
  • This is also done regularly for each week of a block course in phase 1.
• Capitalize on opportunities to highlight connections between course content, activities, and assignments.
  • In our activity templates, we have sections for curriculum content designers to include where content has been previously seen and where it will be revisited again. This helpful information is what the students see in Blackboard.
• Keep announcements concise: focus on one main point per announcement; make use of bullet points or videos to separate large regions of text.

• Conduct synchronous office hours or chat sessions whenever possible.
  • We do this in numerous ways, depending on the Block course, clerkship, elective, etc. For Block courses, some directors use an open Google Doc to collect questions from students and provide answers on a rolling basis.
• Offer to schedule one-on-one synchronous meetings with students via web conferencing (e.g., Zoom, WebEx)

• Moderate discussion threads on a regular basis.
• Answer student questions within forums with prompt and complete responses.
• Recognize exemplary responses and summarize points expressed.

• Provide personalized feedback to students in various ways (e.g., in-line grading, auto-graded quizzes, rubrics).
  • We tend to not have students submit papers, though we do use auto-graded quizzes with feedback.
• Use constructive feedback and supportive language to help students understand the areas they need to improve.

• Communicate proactively with learners throughout the course to discuss their progress, especially if they are missing assignments or at-risk for failing.
• Contact students who are not actively participating in our courses and offer assistance; include OSA advisors on these emails.
• Support students in accessing content that is external to the course (e.g., lab software, videos).
• The Wellness Center at UIC has created some helpful documentation for how to better support students: https://wellnesscenter.uic.edu/news-stories/how-to-navigate-online-classes/.
• Refer students to course-specific support or UIC support services as needed.

Adapted from LSU Online

It’s a very good idea to test what your physical environment is like prior to delivering content online, especially if you are not delivering from campus. You can open up Zoom and start a meeting, even with no one there. This enables you to determine if there is an echo or some other feedback in your audio, or that your lighting is not quite right.

Do you wear glasses? Turn on your video in Zoom and see if there is some glare in the lenses. It can be a little disconcerting for viewers if they can’t see your eyes due to screen glare.

What’s the lighting like where you will present? Make sure you don’t have a lot of lighting behind you because when you turn on your camera, you will likely be in shadow.

How’s your sound? You can even record something really brief using Zoom – play it back to hear your sound. You may find you need a mic (or a new one), etc. You may also discover that there is some white noise or other sounds that could be distracting to participants.

Wardrobe matters!

Avoid wearing any clothing that has any high-contrast, tight repeating patterns such as narrow black and white stripes or black and white checkerboard patterns.  Clothing with shiny material is also problematic. Digital video tends to struggle with displaying such patterns and materials, and the bizarre way it can sometimes interpret them can be very distracting. This goes for neckties or scarves as well.

If using a green screen to change your background, you must avoid wearing anything that has any element of green in it, as any green materials will appear transparent in your video.

Finally, avoid wearing any fabrics that are audibly loud, such as corduroy or certain crinkly fabrics.  Zoom and other web conferencing systems automatically try to cancel out suddenly loud and/or static-sounding noises, so choosing audibly quiet clothing (and as noise-free an environment as possible) can help eliminate dropped audio. Similarly, avoid wearing any jewelry that might make a sound – even if you think it won’t make any sound… it probably will.

Here is a website that shows a few images of what NOT to wear: https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/what-to-wear-and-avoid-on-camera-part-one–cms-27655

Online Course Communication Guidelines (Community Norms)

Ensure you and your students follow these guidelines:

• Be mindful of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, as well as different political ideologies and religious beliefs.
• Use good judgment when composing your written responses. Swearing and profanity should be avoided. Also consider that slang terms can be misunderstood or misinterpreted.
• Be careful using all capital letters when composing your written responses. This can be considered “shouting” on the Internet and is regarded as impolite or aggressive. It can also be stressful on the eye when trying to read your message.
• Be respectful of others’ views and opinions.
• Be careful when using acronyms. If you use an acronym it is best to spell out its meaning first, then put the acronym in parentheses afterward, for example: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). After that you can use the acronym freely throughout your message.
• Use good grammar and spelling in written communications.
• In emails, always identify yourself and what class and section you are in. It is a good practice to put your course and campus in the subject line. This helps your instructor identify course-related emails.

**Even though these recommendations came from the Chicago campus Student Curricular Board, they can be applied more broadly to all campuses.**

Please be as accessible and responsive to students as possible.

Chat Feature

Indicate if someone will be monitoring the chat at the start of the session and tell students who will be doing it, so they know who to contact if needed.

Questions

Indicate to students the preferred method for answering questions at the start of the session. Options include:

• Asking questions as they arise,
• At designated times throughout the session,
• Or at the end of the session

AND

• Using the “raise hand” feature
• Typing “Question” into the chat
• Using their microphone and saying, “I have a question”.

(Coordinators, please include a slide with this information at the beginning of the slide deck presentation.)

Set stopping points during the presentation to allow for questions after new material is presented, when introducing a complicated topic, before transitioning to a new topic, or at least approximately every 20 minutes.

If a question is asked and it will be covered later in the slide deck, presenting faculty should inform students that it will be addressed at a later point.

Direct students towards the Google Doc, Office Hours, or Slack when questions posed are not relevant or related to the content of the session.

Utilize the non-verbal feedback option in Zoom to pose yes/no questions. These feedback options are visible in the participant panel. This helps to keep the chat much less crowded.

Utilize multiple choice questions (Poll Everywhere or Zoom polls) and short answers (Poll Everywhere).

Slide Decks

When using questions/answers for students to respond to, it is highly recommended that there is a slide with the question and answer choices for students to review, a Poll Everywhere slide after it (if being used), and then a repeat of the first question slide with correct / preferred answers highlighted. Include rationale on slides/notes why the wrong answers are incorrect and correct answers are correct.

Consider adding a slide to the slide deck explaining how faculty would like to hear questions about content from students.

Use the annotation tools within Zoom to highlight what specifically is being discussed on a slide (e.g. images, processes, etc.).

Include email address of presenting faculty in initial and final slides if students can contact them directly with questions.

Breakout Rooms

Alert students in advance that you may be rotating through breakout rooms to answer questions.

Expect that students will use the “ask for help” button to call faculty into a breakout room if they have questions.

Expect that students will return to the main room when the conversation has concluded before the discussion time has timed out.

Inform students the duration of time they can expect to be in the breakout rooms, exactly what is expected of students while they are there, and how the faculty expect students to participate in a larger group conversation when everyone is back in the main room.