Stanford delivers advice for teaching online

Thousands of high school teachers from around the world recently took part in the Teaching Your Class Online program, a collaboration of Stanford Online High School and Stanford Continuing Studies. An article by Kathleen J Sullivan on the Stanford University website outlines some of the key learnings.

Presentations were structured as broad instructive online teaching essential tutorials through to small group hands-on workshops which were organised into humanities and STEM tracks.

Course instructors found that the participants held the same teaching philosophy, regardless of the mode of learning, but a key concern was how best to maintain supportive interaction.

Building supportive communities online

English teacher Meg Lamont delivered the online teaching essentials course and suggested the following steps:

1. Check in with all students at least once a week — Lamont believes engagement comes from bonding. She suggests asking open-ended questions that call for a brief response from each student to help create a connection and give an understanding of different personalities.
2. Make sure to hear from every student every week — students can easily disappear online, so Lamont suggests ensuring there is a touchpoint with every student every week, ideally during the live class.
3. Offer virtual drop-in office hours outside of class — this provides students with a casual setting in which to ask questions or get additional help.
4. Allow for general chat — Lamont believes there is benefit in allowing time for general chat at both the beginning and end of class times.
5. Low-tech still works too — a humble phone call can quickly solve a lot of problems and strengthen feelings of support.

The power of chat

Lamont describes text chat as an essential tool for creating bonds in the virtual classroom.

As a real-time call-and-response tool, it can be used to encourage other students, raise questions or try out ideas. While teachers are hesitant to employ chat because it appears to be hard to control or track, Lamont firmly believes in the benefits — especially when it comes to encouraging involvement from shy or reserved students.

Essentials content available

For educators interested in learning more, five days of content from the ‘Teach Your Class Online: The Essentials’ program is available for download here. The free content covers general guidelines for adapting lessons to an online format, common pitfalls, best practice and how to troubleshoot student issues.

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