In this month's advice column for improved online teaching, Murph Kinney reviews Small Teaching Online, which shares how cognitive and educational science can help us be more effective when teaching at a distance.

It’s all over but the shouting—the semester, that is.

I don’t know about you, but this has felt like the longest semester in the 20 years I’ve taught at a community college. For eighteen years, since I was certified to teach online at Los Medanos College in California, I’ve taught at least one to two online classes a semester. As we all know, however, deciding to teach online and being required to teach online are two different things.

A month’s break, and then we classroom faculty will be back at it. I suspect that most of us want to improve our online game, but we simply don’t have the time to dedicate for a complete overhaul and there’s just too many options in terms of technology. Where to begin? Well, I have one book suggestion for you to read over the break and two technology tools that can make your online teaching both easier and more effective.

A book to read

Let me make a recommendation for a short but powerful read over the winter break: Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes by Flower Darby with James M. Lang. Darby and Lang’s book is short enough to read quickly and yet powerful enough that their suggestions can make an impact immediately in terms of student success and engagement. Small Teaching Online focuses on the pedagogy of online teaching rather than specific technologies, so there are ideas to implement rather than applications or tools to deploy.

The books is divided into three sections: Designing for Learning, Teaching Humans, and Motivating Online Students (and Instructors).

The first section discusses how to design an online course for effective learning. Although this seems like a daunting task—and it is!—the suggestions included in the three chapters for this section can be implemented incrementally. Darby and Lang showcase how to be transparent in terms of course design for students. Just as in an on-campus classroom I often reflect in class about why I selected a particular assignment or strategy to gain student buy in and understanding, the authors explain how to effectively do that at multiple times throughout an online course, so that students understand the rationale for our course policies and assignments.

This section also suggest models for intervention to support and guide students, building that support into the course design using methods like breaking down complex assignments into component tasks and providing ongoing explicit assessment of significant discussion board posts visible to the entire class. Finally, this section recommends technology important to online classes—in particular focusing on short video lectures and already existing videos, particularly on YouTube. Rather than suggesting specific technology, however, the authors assess why and how instructor-produced videos are important and what role they play in keeping students on track, focusing on the pedagogy of instruction rather than a specific tool.

It is the second section that really captivated me. Darby and Lang focus on the need for intentionality in the online setting, particularly in terms of building the important social and emotional connection with and among our students. If you believe—as I do—that knowledge is socially constructed, then that social framework is key to a successful online course, but creating a community of inquiry must be intentional. This section discusses how instructors can be visibly present in an online class in a way that is supportive of students and how we can foster student-to-student interaction.

One easy way of showing up is to post announcements on a regular basis and be personable in that communication rather than business-like. Another suggestion is to make weekly video introductions to the material in a casual setting, so that instructor personality and style are communicated as well as course information. One chapter in this section is on timely and effective grading and feedback—grading that gives enough information for students to improve but which doesn’t tax the instructor in terms of time. Here, Darby and Lang give excellent suggestions about using rubrics and audio or video feedback. Office hours are also addressed, with the authors suggesting that themed office hours can be effective motivators to get students to engage with the instructor and their peers.

The third section is also quite useful, as Darby and Lang detail the best ways to keep students and ourselves motivated throughout the semester. They believe that student autonomy increases student motivation and they provide several suggestions about how to allow students to choose assignments and take responsibility for their own learning. Also the authors showcase several ways to help students connect material they learn in class with knowledge or skills they already have, providing a framework for students to makes sense of their coursework. Several quick assignments for reflection or concept mapping are provided for our use and, like other suggestions in the book, the practices require little time but result in increased student engagement and mastery of content.

The bottom line: Although I’ve been teaching online for two decades, this book has provided me with several strategies I plan to implement in the next semester and those strategies will be quick for me to try, without requiring a large investment of time. I highly suggest reading it during this holiday season. It will be a gift for you and a gift for your students.

Technology to try

How did I live without Calendly? Calendly allows your students (or anyone) to schedule a meeting with you, without that time-consuming back-and-forth email discussion about when people are able to meet. With Calendly, you decide which blocks of time you’ll be available for (office hours!) and for how long your standard meeting time will be (10 minutes? 15? more?). My officemate (when we were able to regularly go to an office) Jill Malik first showed me Calendly. As part of her signature block in announcements and emails to her students, she includes the phrase “Want to schedule an appointment with me?” and has her clickable Calendly right there.

And, another productivity booster is Text Blaze, a Google Chrome extension which allows a snippet of text to serve as a keyboard shortcut for repetitive communication or feedback. For instance, I don’t allow late work, so when grading in Blackboard, I give feedback to the student which reads “Although I appreciate your effort here, as indicated in the syllabus, I don’t accept late work—instead I drop two weeks’ worth of assignments.” Whew. That’s a lot to type. But thanks to Text Blaze, I don’t have to. I simply type “/late” and that whole message appears, and I’m off to mark the next student’s work.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be writing a column covering online teaching in forthcoming issues of The WORD. My intent is to review a particular book, journal or website in each issue—something that can be used by instructors across every discipline—and to provide suggestions about time savers as I discover them in my own practice.

If there’s something you’d like to bring to my attention, please be in touch.

Enjoy the break: I hope you come back rested and rejuvenated and ready to get gradually better at teaching online!