At the beginning of the course

• Introduce yourself both professionally and personally (e.g. your hobbies). You can also create a short video.
• Make the syllabus available to the students and present it in as much detail as possible. Here you can find our syllabus template.
• Create a ‘class netiquette’: Establish rules for teaching, either alone or with students, regarding communication of absences, types and possible ways of queries.

Icebreakers in online lessons

Icebreakers are classroom activities and exercises which you can use to help students to network, exchange ideas and create a positive atmosphere.
Here you can find ideas for Icebreaker activities:

• https://symondsresearch.com/icebreakers-for-online-teaching/    
• https://symondsresearch.com/virtual-team-building-activities/   
• https://www.presence.io/blog/53-virtual-activity-ideas-to-keep-college-students-engaged-during-covid-19/   
• http://digfo.goethe.de/

Provide your students with room for communication, creativity and activity

Enable your students to actively participate in the course and to communicate with each other. Inform students to what extent you as course instructor will be involved in these communication channels: e.g. let them know which activities you will join e.g. once a week and which activities you will leave entirely to your students.

• Let the students introduce themselves and present their expectations of the course, previous experiences, etc. set a deadline for this!
• Give the students the opportunity to get to know each other privately, to introduce themselves, to talk to each other, to upload their own photos, etc. You can leave this forum to your students.
• Virtual coffee break – encourage virtual meetings of your students.
• Ask your students to ask content-related questions (FAQ) not by individual email, but to post them in the forum instead.

Offer support for learning

• Address your students directly in videos, contact students in discussion forums or via e-mail or live chat.
• Provide online consultation hours (e.g. in MS Teams) where you are available to answer students’ questions
• Make regular announcements: Share a unit summary or course feedback or post appointments and reminders. If you regularly send information to your students, they will also be more active in the course themselves and feel more encouraged to contribute.
• Provide a so-called „Safe Learning Zone“ (an open learning atmosphere). This will allow all students to ask questions, even if there is a high diversity in the group or several students not or less actively involved).
• Consider how good your students are at self-learning. Do students need support in this respect, e.g. through tandem learning with other students or particularly close supervision? 
• Communicate to students which contact persons are available to deal with questions and problems and how they can be reached. 

Support active learning

Teaching a pure online course, it is even more important to actively promote a collaborative learning atmosphere.

• Adapt activities you are used to from classroom teaching to distance learning. Students need more information about what they have to do and when they have to deliver results. Examples: „During this distance learning meeting you will do a group work of about 15 minutes. Here are the task documents to start the group work effectively. No preparation is necessary“. 
• Where ever possible, consider a reflection and or an output phase after the input phase.
• Enrich your tasks with videos etc. or include voice recording to your slides.
• Help your students to develop intrinsic motivation. Show them application exercises, transfers to subsequent tasks, simulated applications. This all will contribute to increased satisfaction in studying.
• Where possible, consider integrating informal learning sources such as social networks as informal learning sources to promote seamless learning, academic and non-academic learning, curricular and co-curricular learning.
• Try to bring fun into your online sessions. Consider methods that suit your personality: post an interesting YouTube video, tell a joke, share your personal experiences etc.
• Set goals for individual learning blocks and monitor learning progress and success, through regular evaluation.
• Enable self-assessment of your students e.g. by means of self-assessment tests or joint, playful repetition of content, e.g. with Kahoot
• Use polls and live voting. With these survey tools you can quickly gain an overview of content related issues, organisational needs or student performance.
• Integrate group work into online teaching, e.g. assign different tasks to sub-groups.
• Organise small group work in „breakout rooms“. Note that online exercises take more time than face-to-face exercises, and stay in touch with the groups during their activities.

Feedback

• Evaluation criteria and assessment tools should be defined much more in detail than in classroom teaching in order to keep an objective eye.
• When giving feedback to your students, be respectful, concrete and encouraging.
• Provide feedback on tasks as quick as possible.
• Use different feedback formats: audio, video, written. Create an adjustable feedback template. This allows you to provide your feedback on how they are doing in the course (formative feedback) and how they can improve their work.
• Make your assessments (grades, points) permanently available to students, e.g. in Moodle, so that they can monitor their progress.
• Obtain active feedback from your students to involve them in the process of designing and developing your online teaching.

Source:
FH OÖ Best Practice Sammlung
Methodensammlung in der Lehre
IMD Toolbox
8 ways to make lesson fun and engaging in an online classroom (York, 2020)
Handreichung PRO Lehre (TU München)
Seminare online durchführen: Das sollten Sie beachten! (Hawlitschek)
53 Virtual Activity Ideas to Keep College Students Engaged During COVID-19 (Tandet, 2020)
Digitale Fortbildung (Goethe Institut)

---