CHSS Online Teaching Initiative

Teaching Synchronously Online

Synchronous online teaching requires that faculty and students be present in a virtual space at the same time. How the course looks can differ significantly. Here are some tips to help your course be more interactive and to facilitate student learning.

Organization

• Create a basic timeline for your virtual session to keep you organized
• Avoid text heavy slides. Use more images and videos to keep students engaged
  • Graphic design and video assistance can be found at the UHD CTLE
• Test out your technology beforehand to reduce time in which students are waiting for you are disengaged
• Give students simple activities to do during your transition time to avoid student disengagement
  • Put a questions in the Chat or ask the students to retrieve a particular document
• Consider sharing your screen to demonstrate to students how to access materials

Activities

• Start class with an icebreaker activity that requires student participation
  • This gets them engaged and helps them to learn more about each other
• Use features such as Breakout rooms in Zoom to get students to interact in smaller groups
• Share documents and resources using the Chat feature.
  • Links from Google Docs work well here
• Use the whiteboard feature to keep track of important discussion ideas or to annotated documents or images
• Consider bringing in guest presenters, even for small portions of the class
• Include engaging activities such as
  • Role plays
  • Fishbowl discussions
  • Student showcase in which students share their screen and present to the class

Resources through UHD

20-Minute Mentor: All UHD faculty have access to 20-Minute Mentor trainings. There are a variety focusing on synchronous online teaching that faculty can access for free. Go to the CTLE website to sign up.

UHD Information Technology offers a variety of trainings that can support faculty. See UHD Information Technology calendar of training opportunities.

LinkedIn Learning also has a variety of videos to assist with teaching online synchronous classes that can be accessed using the faculty member’s UHD username and password.

 

Online Resources

Faculty Focus: Synchronous Online Classes: 10 Tips for Engaging Students

Learning Technologies: Best Practices for Synchronous Online Teaching and Learning