Are you new to online learning and need some advice on making your course a success. Well, look no further; we can help. In this article, we will discuss four practices that will make your online course a success.

Practice One: Assess Intentionally. Don’t Over-Assess.

Assessment is necessary. We all know that. You can’t know if your students are grasping the material if there is no assessment. However, you must be intentional with your assessment in online learning.

When you do have to assess, remember that there are many ways to do it other than merely giving a test or quiz. A few assessment tools are:

• Seesaw is a journal that allows the teacher and student to journal back and forth.
• Google Docs can be used like Seesaw.
• With Flipgrid, the teacher assigns a question or prompt, and the student videos their response.
• Adobe Spark allows the students to show their creative side by creating short videos, social graphics, web pages, and more.

Practice Two: Use Project-Based Learning

Project-based learning is simple. You give your students a real-world problem, and they get to solve it using the lessons they’ve learned in their online classes. They implement their ideas, experience hurdles, analyze, reapply, and keep on learning. Students (and their families) can potentially learn a lot from project-based learning.

Teachers often think of Science experiments when they think of project-based learning, but there are so many other ways to incorporate it into online learning. 

Two other avenues you may be thinking of are creation and creative thinking, but there are more areas. For instance, you can have your students build a raised vegetable garden. They’ll be learning Math through the measurements. 

Have them journal with you using the Seesaw app or Google Docs so that they’ll be documenting their discoveries. This is English and can also be used for assessment. 

Have them research the when’s, why’s, and how’s of raised vegetable gardens. This will cover Science and History. 

Then, have them do a video presentation telling what they did, what wasn’t working right, and what they had to change to make it work right. This will play into Speech and is also another form of assessment. 

Lastly, have them share their vegetable garden with the needy. Thus, they have served the community.

Practice Three: Create Student Engagement and Accountability in Online Learning

When students do projects together, they create a sense of belonging. They create a classroom community where they want to participate, and when they want to participate, life is much simpler for you as the teacher! The goal is to enhance their sense of self-esteem through the completion of their projects and, thus, enhance their engagement in the online classroom.

Practice Four: Plan Your Closing Activity

Every lesson and every course should end with a wrap-up activity. Give your students a conclusion of what they just learned. Let your students know what’s next. Remind them when their assignments are due. Lastly, do something to end on a happy note.

Conclusion

In this article, we have outlined 3 practices that will make your online course a success. Do you know have any tips to share? If so, leave them in the comment section below.