Enhance your online class with multimedia
The internet offers a wide variety of ways to share content with your students, which means that you can offer something valuable to a student body with diverse learning styles. The multimedia capacity of the web can transform your students from passive consumers of information into self-directed learners. Using different methods to present information is also essential for ensuring equal accessibility for all students.
By presenting course content in multiple ways, you are not only giving your students the opportunity to take control of their own learning, you are also helping them remember more. Dual coding theory proposes that providing both visual and verbal information in your classroom can do more than help you reach more students, it can actually help your students retain more information.
Break up your lectures
Recorded traditional lectures posted online are rarely engaging and the length of most lecture videos, sound recordings, or transcripts can be daunting for students. Separating your content into manageable units is a good idea. The average human attention span is approximately ten to twenty minutes, so it's also a good idea to keep videos and sound recordings under ten minutes and organize them by topic for your students' review. Many third party audio and video tools will require you to limit your material to five or ten minutes as well.
The online advantage to lecturing, though, is that your students now have control over their own learning. Their instructors have pause and rewind buttons. Students spend less time note-taking and more time listening when they know they can go back and review a lecture before the big test. Remember to include transcripts with your audio and video files and captions for your images so that you do not exclude your students with disabilities.
Work backwards to plan lessons
When constructing your course, sometimes it helps to work backwards. Start by listing your learning objectives. What do you want your students to be able to do or know by the end of your course? This is also something to include on your syllabus. Letting your students know what you want them to accomplish can help them see the bigger picture while working on assignments. Bloom's Taxonomy is a popular model that can help you with this if you are having trouble determining your desired results.
After you've established objectives for your course, decide on your assessment methods. How are you going to evaluate your students' progress and ability? Aligning your assessment with your learning objectives can help you trim unnecessary activities from your course schedule and might also help you spot gaps in your lesson planning.