To support instructors needing to make a quick transition to utilizing an online environment, we’re offering resources and recommendations that can be immediately put to use by instructors, to benefit both faculty and their students.
These resources are divided into six key topic areas for teaching remotely:
- Welcoming students to the online environment
- Managing your online presence
- Organizing your online course
- Planning and facilitating quality discussions
- Recording effective microlectures
- Engaging students in readings and microlectures
In the discussion forum below, we invite you to submit questions about these resources or share instructional challenges you may be facing.
Effective Online Instruction Webinars
To continue the discussion, we’ve partnered with higher ed leaders and experts in online teaching and learning for a webinar series on best-practices in key areas to ensure quality online instruction for student success. Learn more and register.
Create a welcome message designed to calm student fears and let them know that you are “in this together” and ready to fully support their continued learning.
Create a question-and-answer forum in which students can post general questions about the course and assignments. If you think it would be helpful, you can also create a social forum for students to connect with one another. Monitor the Q&A forum to ensure that correct information is being shared and to address any unanswered questions (Darby & Lang, 2019, p. 29).
Create a video that takes your students on a tour of your course in the online environment. Try to include the following on your tour: (a) how to prepare for online learning, (b) directions for navigating the course, and (c) weekly communication expectations.
One of the most important aspects—if not the most important aspect—of any student’s learning is you, the instructor. Students look for you to be involved in discussions, respond to questions, provide feedback and encouragement, and reach out when you notice they may need additional assistance. This does not mean that you need to be online 24/7. Establishing expectations and routines around your online time can help students feel more supported and engaged in your course.
Online students can become confused, frustrated, or disengaged if they find it challenging to simply navigate a course learning environment. Try to make the organization of your course as clear and intuitive as possible, ensuring students have more time and cognitive resources to engage with course content and activities (Darby, 2019).
Learning modules, or units of study, are the building blocks of an online course. Ensuring consistency in module design helps students more quickly understand your expectations and plan their work time more effectively.
Establishing a weekly pace for your online modules, or units of study, helps students manage their time to meet course expectations. A standard rhythm often reduces stress, because the structure answers questions such as “What’s next?” (Boettcher & Conrad, 2016).
To help students get the most out of discussions, set clear expectations for their participation. Providing students with discussion forum grading rubrics helps them understand, and therefore better meet, your expectations for thoughtful participation.
Assign a self-reflection activity, aligned to your discussion forum rubrics, to help students evaluate their participation in an online discussion.
The type and amount of feedback you provide at key points in a discussion should be strategic, to ensure quality discussions are taking place (Boettcher & Conrad, 2016, p. 167).
Microlectures are short (6 minutes or less), instructor-produced videos that are designed using a structured format to provide effective explanations of a single key concept or specific skill set. Use this format to help maintain student attention and allow students to reengage with the content when and if needed.
There are a variety of ways to keep students engaged in the content and help them focus their attention on what is most important. We can also use a variety of practices to assess how well they are learning and making key connections. Try a few of these out to find the process or set of processes that work best for you and your students.
Provide students with a skeletal outline to support their learning and help them track the concepts and issues of highest importance.
Special thanks to our incredibly talented and gracious contributors:
- Michael Wesch, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State University
- For additional resources, see “Teaching Without Walls: 10 Tips for Online Teaching” and ANTH 101: Anthropology for Everyone.
- Flower Darby, Director of Teaching for Student Success, Northern Arizona University, and author, with James M. Lang, of Small Teaching Online
- See Flower’s advice guide, “How to Be a Better Online Teacher,” published in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
- Kevin Kelly, Coauthor of Advancing Online Teaching: Creating Equity-Based Digital Learning Environments
Thank you for these well organized and easy to use resources!
Thanks very much!
Thank you so much for releasing these quick lessons to help us all transition to a “new normal.”
This is so well organized. Thank you for putting it together. We will be using this to train faculty at Marjorie Bash College in Nigeria. Please if anyone knows about free online courses on Library management and online teaching, we’d be glad to explore such. [email protected]
These are amazing and so quickly assembled. Thank you for organizing these tips for use.
Excellent and practical advice with examples of how to accomplish each topic! Adding self videos was new to me this year in Canvas and I appreciate the ideas generated from this video clip section. Having to suddenly switch from “face to face” to all online for my courses is an exciting, new adventure. After reviewing this information, I see how some of my current inclass coursework and instruction has to be adjusted. With the help of this information, I am anxious to make appropriate revisions and share with my students. Thanks!
As a facilitator of an ACUE cohort, I get to see these valuable resources in all of your modules. Kudos to ACUE for creating and sharing these timely resources to support all faculty teaching remotely during the COVID 19 crisis. Thank you!
Thanks for making this available to all faculty, not just those in the program. It’s a brave new world for many new to online learning and the guidance is appreciated!
Please note that the following URL does not work. https://www.apple.com/au/support/imovie/tutorial/
Hi Michael,
Thank you so much for bringing that to our attention! Here’s a link that should work: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210410
These have been updated it in the resources as well.
ACUE
Thanks for sharing these materials! Looking forward to taking your Teaching Online module in June!
I work for a University in Pakistan that encourages faculty to use virtual learning environments for teaching and learning purposes. Due to the worldwide COVID-19 (coronavirus) situation, all academic institutions in the country are closed.
We would like to immediately equip all our faculty with the necessary skills and knowledge to start teaching online synchronously and asynchronously in these hard times. For this purpose, I would like to request and seek your permission to reuse and adapt online resources https://acue.org/online-teaching-toolkit/ available on your website. I found this resource extremely useful.
Time is an important factor for us because face to face classes are all stopped and we have to shift programs/courses online.
I look forward to hearing from you and appreciate you for developing this resource for larger community.
Much appreciated.
Hi Khurram,
Please feel free to distribute these resources to anyone you think may find them useful. Please let us know if there’s anything else we can do to be helpful. These are certainly challenging times!
ACUE
Hello,
Would permission to link to this resource extend to a government agency? I work for Montana’s Office of Public Instruction and we are creating a course for all eductors to transition online and we’d like to link to this resource. Thank you!
Hi Carli, absolutely. Technically these resources are licensed as all rights reserved by ACUE, but we intend to treat them more along the lines of Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0). Consider this note as permission for you to link to or utilize these resources as needed for Montana’s Office of Public Instruction. Good luck.
Would permission to link to this resource extend to a Mexican University?
Beautiful!!!!!–organized, practical, and professional!!!!!
Ludy
This is very helpful. I am a big Michael fan anyway since his work with Visual Syllabi. His Tedx is great as well.
Thank you so much for sharing! Everything is outstanding and enormously helpful and organized. Your contribution with assisting us is appreciated beyond any words of gratitude. Humbled and grateful to experience this assistance from all of you!
Thank you so much for producing this. You are helping many of us transition to remote teaching during a stressful time. Love the short microlectures–I will be sure to implement them! Please keep it coming. ( ;
Well done. Extremely help ideas on spicing up the remote teaching approach.
These are tremendous resources. I would like to request captioning on your videos. Any chance you can “turn-on” this option from your end?
Hi Amy,
Thank you for the request. We are currently. working on it!
Hi Amy,
The captioning has been added to the videos. Thanks for your note!
ACUE
ACUE, you are wonderful. Thank you for reaching out to faculty and students during this critical time. Your resources and your kindness are greatly appreciated. On behalf of my students and myself, we thank you.
Thank you very much for sharing. It was very easy to follow.
Thank you for making this great resource available, ACUE. My tech-savvy alter ego and I agree that it’s helpful to reluctant and skilled online teachers alike 🙂
Thank you, outstanding resources. I am especially appreciative of the rubrics.
Thank you for your ideas of “Micro-lecturing”, “Skeletal Outlines” and “Creating a Rubric”. I’ve never had to teach online before and I totally welcome this adventure.
Extremely helpful advice, efficiently delivered.
These are amazing tips that I can use, thank you!
i would like to thank you for the guide
as it is for every one it is the only way to communicate with the students
i can send a comments after use the guide and the response from our students
it is a challenge for all of us
Thank you for sharing this well organized tips on online teaching.
This is Awesome! very timely! Thank you so much for providing this resource especially in this current climate of COVID-19 pandemic. I would like to ask for permision to print/ share with other faculty
Hi Ngozi, absolutely. Technically these resources are licensed as all rights reserved by ACUE, but we intend to treat them more along the lines of Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0). Consider this note as permission for you to link to or utilize these resources as needed your faculty. Good luck.
Could ACUE please post the latest link to the free version of DaVinci Resolve? There seem to be a lot of potential URLs out there. A little concerned about choosing one that is not legit and infecting my computer.
Hi Marlene, according to wikipedia that would be Black Magic Design, with a free download at https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/
Thank you very much for your support. I teach nursing courses. I quickly learned some techniques for online discussions that students can post. However, I still am looking into discussions and asking questions during the lecture portion of the course and how can I engage the students instead of me just talking? I will use Kahoot at the beginning and end of the lecture. I can use a case study instead of lecturing on that topic. Clinical is a challenge but we assigned case studies, care mapping, care plans, and the use of ATI which is a platform for students to engage in self-learning. We will meet online to discuss all of these. I feel I am overloading students with work and adding to their stress. We must account for hours of instruction for clinical which is straining on the students. Any comments would be appreciated.
Joanne
Thank you so much for these resources! Such a quick response to the current situation and well-curated materials! I really appreciate the quality and professionalism!
Thank you so very much for sharing your expertise with us! I feel more relaxed and confident going into this online journey with my first-year freshmen students.
Wonderful resources supporting the end-user experience. May I request to share the link to your resources with teachers?
Hi Jaime, absolutely. Technically these resources are licensed as all rights reserved by ACUE, but we intend to treat them more along the lines of Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0). Consider this note as permission for you to link to or utilize these resources as needed your faculty. Good luck.
Thank you for your ideas to apply especially in this current climate of COVID-19 pandemic. This is the first time I will be teaching online and I totally welcome this awesome adventure.
Well organised! Very useful and clear for understanding. What is more – ACUE – you are Humans! Kind, supportive and intelligent.
I really enjoy the video very useful very easy to teacher
Thank you so much for the valuable materials! I really appreciate that.
Thank you very much for sharing all these resources. Very helpful to deal with the present shift to ’emergency online teaching’, and very opportune to develop the future capacity for online teaching and learning.
Thank you for all your support and efforts. The resources are awesome.
Thank you for sharing all these valuable resources. It’s a new challenging route for me to pass. Helping each other and taking each other’s hands make passing easy.
This was very useful. Feel a lot better about this new way of teaching.
Thank you for taking the time to put this together!
Thank you so much for creating these very clear and helpful resources. We would love to share them with our faculty here at our university in Alberta. May we request permission to do so?
I just want to thank you for these very useful tips. I already use some of them, but I like the idea of minilectures with pre-recorded video clips. We still have a few more weeks to go this semester, so I intend to make good use of that idea… for those of us whose student population includes non-native speakers of English, engaging students with a variety of approaches is essential. Thanks again for sharing!
Thanks for the nice videos and organized pdf resources.
Suddenly, everything changed. Enter covid-19. In one week we had to move from the traditional class lectures to online classes. Something we hadn’t really thought about nor prepared well enough for. So it started with searching for tips to get started to best practices. Found everything here. Many thanks and the show goes on.
THANK you!
Excellent suppoting material and information for educational staff and teachers who are starting to teach remotely and on-line. I have a clearer idea on how to guide my teachers at school. I am the head of the English area at a private school in Peru, where we teach English as a foreign language.
Thank you for an excellent set of resources. I appreciate that you include a link to the webinar recordings along with 1-3 key recommendations for each, all on one page! This is so clearly organized. I’ve encouraged our faculty to attend these webinars and have linked to them from our own Course Continuity Guide. (Augustana University, SD)
Thank you so much! If only, I could meet you two months ago. At the beginning of March I started my first online course in Italy at the University of Padua as an absolute beginners. So many mistakes! Never mind. I will be very helpful for the future.
Thank you for such a well structured resource. It has provided step by step guidelines on making online teaching/learning effective
Thank you so much for sharing the instructors’ creative expertise. The Welcome Video will aid in making the class -upclose and personal. It will set a tone for the semester. Effective Micro-lectures are going to be my personal goal for future classes.
I appreciate the information provided yesterday in the “Record Effective Microlectures” session and l look forward to “Engage Students in Readings and Microlectures” on Monday. The resources provided in each of the 6 sessions are clear and very helpful. After 21 years as an Adjunct, I had planned on this semester being my last (I just turned 70.) These video workshops have me thinking about maybe continuing as an online instructor.
Thanks.
These events have been amazing! I was reminded of the importance of faculty teaching faculty – the presenters provided actionable and attainable suggestions for improving the learning experience of our students in online courses and bolstered the confidence of our faculty! Thank you!
Thank you for these resources!
It’s a great resource and good strategy in the era of information overload. Powerful and effective.
Thank you for these awesome resources!
Thank you. These resources are very helpful!
Thank you!
Thank you! These are great resources!
I love these resources. These answer my question as to how I start my online class. Thank you.
I am grateful for the well researched resources and presentation. These resources will facilitate the transition to distance learning for our faculty. Thank you.
This set of videos was very helpful. Thank you!
Very useful resource and lucidly explained.
Hello,
Many thanks for this wonderfully made guide. Being new to this, I would like to know if the resource is free for public use.
Many thanks in advance
Tony Kiangebeni
This is such useful information. I can’t wait to start to implement
This is an amazing guide for professors-teachers. Thank you!!
There are many good ideas, and topics one does not think about when just get familiar with the newness of online instruction. This is good as a go back to after one has gotten adjusted and dialed into the new WAY. It is very helpful, and another reason we need to keep on learning.
Excellent resources; presented in a succinct, easy yet thought provoking manner. Thank you!
What an adventure this has been. Thanks for all the great tips. We’re all in this together!
Very resourceful, well organized content. to the team, thumbs up for for your support as we go through the transition times
Thank you. So many new things one can use.
Well organized.
This was really helpful. I now have many new ideas. Thank you!
Very helpful tips to creating an online course. I am not one for liking being filmed, so your frankness and tips were much appreciated. I do like the idea of the Introduction recording at the beginning of the course to create more of a community. This is will try! Seeing the basic organization of Canvas was also helpful as this is a new tool for our University. Overall, very well done and extremely helpful.
This is very helpful advice, although I will not be making videos.
Thank you for some direct, candid online teaching tips and direction. I liked the honesty and vulnerability that you expressed in relation to the new teaching world that we find outselves in. Well done. It has lifted some of my anxieties about online teaching.
These resources are fantastic! I really enjoyed the videos and that you seem to practice what you preach, in that all videos you share are less than 6 min. On behalf of myself and my students, thank you!
Thank you for sharing all these valuable resources. All the advice is very helpful.
I like your videos and materials. They are very helpful for preparing my online classes. Specifically, I like the idea of Skeleton outlines. Thank you.
Very well done and extremely useful! Topics discussed are exactly what I need. Thank you.
I have enjoyed reading these resources. They will be helpful in my classes.
Thank you for all the, extremely necessary, guidance.
Thank you for providing us with such valuable resources.
Teaching online is quite intimidating for a very traditional “senior” educator. I appreciate the advice, suggestions and resources provided in these video clips. Thank you!
Thank you so much! These resources are so valuable!
These resources are simply amazing! Thanks a million for your fantastic work!
Great information. I too struggle with being comfortable on camera and am excited to try shorter micro lectures.
MUCHAS GRACIAS POR EL MATERIAL
At last I found some real practical tips and examples for me to actually use!!! THANK YOU!
For people like me who are so new, I am not even comfortable looking at myself on the video so I know I have a long way to go but I am ready to learn! Thanks you!
skeletal out line will help. any tricks on how to make a video
These are great! They are easily transformed for use in the HS setting as well. Thank you.
Very helpful. As an art teacher it does not all apply of course to the special needs of studio work, but the overall concepts are valuable and certainly can be applied.
Thank you! This is very useful information!
Thank you so much as I prepare for fall. I taught online for several years before moving to in seat classes. The reminders and resources are super helpful!
Thanks great information especially for someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience to online learning.
I have been teaching online for a long time and I do use the Zoom for virtual classes and office hours. I have been hesitant to record micro lectures but now I feel motivated to do so. Thank you.
Informative videos and quite helpful in this new normal! I have been teaching online for more than a decade but what necessitates now is to make sure that the students who are visual learners only can adapt to the online environment.
I found this resources very useful. Can I use it for engaging others on online teaching, including government training programs?
I enjoyed these videos and found them all useful – they provide an over arching framework for online teaching regardless of our subjects. In my case it is physics. So the challenge is alternative to real labs. I teach IB physics. Also focusing on Core concepts and skills since the teaching time is reduced.
Agradezco mucho todos sus tips para que podamos realizar mejor esta nueva forma de enseñanza invertida. Parece fácil, porque se centra en las personas, para no hacer todo mecánico. GRacias
Very helpful. Thank you. I plan to use it when school reopens in a week’s time.
muy util gracias saludos. lo implementare en mis clases
Son muy útiles todas las recomendaciones para que nuestras clases sean más productivas en el aprovechamiento de los temas por parte de los alumnos.
Thank you for your suggestions. Encouraging and useful.
Very Insightful information. Much appreciated
Hi! Thank you for these timely and well-organized materials! May I request to use these materials and share with colleagues in my department? Also, there are very useful templates I can share with my students, such as the Discussion Rubrics, Skeletal Outline and the Discussion Self Grading. May I upload these documents in my LMS? Kindly advise me on how to properly give attribution in case I will be allowed to upload these. Thank you again!
Very helpful
Very helpful, Thanks
Thank you! Very easy to follow.
Thank you for this great resource! I will be sharing this link with our faculty.
thanks for great tips .. these will definitely raise the level of online teaching and planning
Thank you very much for this resource. I am finishing my MSN-Nursing Educator degree and have learned quite a bit from this Toolkit.
Very helpful information… clear and concise! Thank you.
Extremely helpful video. Thank you for this helpful effort. 🙏
Very useful information and resources. This is a very timely help when almost every body is providing or receiving Online instruction.
Very nice introduction.
I found this very useful and easy to follow. I already deliver on-line but still found some very useful tips, thank you