While new campus lockdowns and delayed school openings haven’t marked an ideal start to the year, they have reinforced what we likely all knew: online teaching is here to stay. As you reconnect your webcam and ready yourself for the upcoming months of teaching to faces in Zoom boxes, Jay, Chuck, and I want to share an online teaching framework and helpful tips from Harvard B School’s Faculty Lounge (Jan. 18, 2021) called REMOTE. It stands for Reactions, Eye contact, Manageable, Organized, Thoughtful, and Engagement —all critical facets of ensuring a successful online class.
Reactions: Encourage students to use facial expressions or gestures to indicate whether they agree or disagree with what is being said in class. If students can’t access their video, they can use chat functions, polls, or emojis to share their reactions.
Eye Contact: Prioritize personal connections. Have the video of the student who is speaking right in front of you. That way, students feel like you’re looking and talking right to them.
Manageable: Keep your setup simple and practice, practice, practice. Do what makes you best able to credibly deliver the value that you are used to delivering.
Organized: Plan for less and be prepared. Have everything nearby, all queued up and ready to go before class: the specific agenda for the class, any materials—slides, polls, etc.—that you want to use, and a list of students you plan to call on.
Thoughtful: Be considerate of your students’ needs. Online, we need to be more thoughtful about every action we take and how our students are experiencing it.
Engagement: Keep things exciting—but don’t overdo it. Be sure to mix things up. You don’t need fancy pyrotechnics in every single session, and you don’t need to fill every moment of an online course with something new and exciting. For example, one day you might use a PowerPoint slide as your online board and the next day you may use an iPad or a flipchart because you plan to sketch a more complex idea.
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