It isn’t uncommon for a lot of time to pass between when you’re trained to teach online and when your online class is actually ready to run–after all, you have to develop the course, a process for which we at DePaul budget two academic quarters. That’s a lot of time thinking about building an online class that you’re not spending thinking about best practices for actually delivering the online class. Here are some tips and reminders for keeping your course running smoothly when you’re ready to deliver it.

Before the term starts—touching base with your students

You should send an email to your students two to three weeks before the start of the quarter. Here are some points to cover:

• Make sure students know they’re enrolled in an online class – This sounds silly, but some students miss that little piece of information in the enrollment system.
• Reenforce that online classes take work – Some students take online classes because they think it will be easy or in addition to a full schedule of face-to-face courses. Let them know that online classes take time and self-discipline.
• Inform them of technology requirements, textbooks, and other required materials – Give students ample time to make sure they meet the course technical requirements and purchase textbooks, etc. This will help them hit the ground running in the first week.
• Let them know when the course site will be available – Your students will worry that they’re missing something if they don’t see the course site in the learning management system. Let them know when it will be available.

• Just let them know you’re there – This email can also serves to ensure to students that even though the entire course is going to facilitated by computers and networks, that there is a human being involved who cares about their success.
• Make sure they got it—and read it – Ask students to respond to the email, and keep track of who has and hasn’t. You may need to pursue other means of communication if a student doesn’t seem to be getting your email.

The first week—setting the tone

Follow these steps to set a healthy culture for the course and make sure everyone gets off to a good start.

• Make sure your students log in – Check your course statistics to make sure everyone has logged in within a day or two of the course being opened.
• Encourage students to subscribe to notifications – Make sure students have their settings correct to receive notifications for course news items and discussion replies. If you use the course calendar, remind them that they can subscribe to it so course events will appear in their preferred personal calendar app.
• Prod students who aren’t completing early assignments – You’ve likely been told to include low-stakes assignments in the first week of class. Prod students who haven’t completed these. Make sure they know there’s accountability in your class. If a student falls behind early, they may never catch up.
• Be active in introductory discussions – Your intro discussions will set the tone for the entire course. Make sure there’s a positive culture in your discussions by being engaging in the first one.

Mid-course—checking in

Do an anonymous survey to get feedback from your students on how the course is going. Do this sometime between week three and five, so your students have gotten a sense of the rhythm of the course but you still have time to make meaningful course corrections based on the feedback. This is especially important the first time you teach a new course.

Every week—the routine

Either through course news items or class emails, provide students with weekly touchpoint communications that recap the previous week’s activities and prime students for the following week:

• Highlight insightful discussion posts – Draw students’ attention to important points made by their classmates. It’s positive reinforcement for students and shows that you’re engaged.
• Respond to gaps in student learning – Did everyone miss a question on the quiz, or skip over an important point in a discussion? Address it. (Make sure if you have any auto-graded assignments you’re checking your question statistics so you can do this effectively.)
• Contextualize the week’s main topics – Tie the week’s activities back to the learning goals of the course. Why is what we did this week important?
• Prime the students for the next week’s main topic – Give some context about why they should care about what’s coming up next.

Remember that two of the biggest problems we see in online classes are 1) high withdrawal rates and 2) grade distribution that pushes students to one extreme or the other. You can mitigate these problems by making sure that students are prepared, that they get off to a good start, and that they’re engaged.