Revisiting evidence-based online teaching tips

Here we are, one year into the pandemic, and most of us are still teaching our courses online. Although there may be some light at the end of the tunnel in terms of some campuses permitted limited on-campus time, lecture-heavy courses are tending to remain online. With that being said, teachers and students alike are hitting their fatigue point as we hit the midpoint of the spring semester. Now more than ever, it is important to remember some of the evidence-based teaching tips that will help our students and us.

While students may have initially wanted synchronous lectures and many faculty felt most comfortable with the ease of simply moving their in-person classes to a live streaming lecture format, we now all know Zoom fatigue is real. Although trying to reproduce our course schedules as true to what it was on campus was a logical approach, it seems the cracks in this approach are starting to become evident. From what I am hearing, students are pushing back about the amount of time they must be Zoom or synchronously engaged.

So I thought I would revisit two very simply evidence-based online teaching tips for you to consider. But before I get to those tips, however, let’s review what we know about online teaching, aside from the fact that it is significantly different than on-campus classes. Engagement and connection are two cornerstones to success for online education. One of our most significant hurdles is ensuring the students feel connected to us and feel we are present in their learning. And it’s not just a connection with us; it’s a connection with their classmates. Thus, synchronous (live) activities help us do this and are an important component when we think about delivering the course content. Engagement is also critical active learning is essential for learning. Listening or watching a lecture is only half of the learning equation; engagement with learning is the other half.

So as you head into the last half of this semester and find your students are lecture Zoomed fatigued, consider some simple and fairly easy ways to mix things up a bit. If you provide live lectures, consider “chunking” them, or break them down into smaller pieces. There are a few ways to do this. Instead of doing them all live, consider rec0rding some of them in 20-25 minute segments and giving students a deadline by which they must have viewed them. Add or include in some short pre and post activities or tasks for them to complete and submit. These tasks should make them work with the material they just heard. You can also require them to read more about it in their required text to complete the activity. This will mix things up a bit and allow students to take back some control of their time and the decision of when they choose to engage in learning.  In reality, moving some of the live lectures to recorded ones will not require a significant amount of time. Recording a 2 hours lecture in 20-25 minute segments doesn’t take much more time than giving the lecture live. Creating a few questions or application tasks for the students to do is also not onerous. The key here is that you are only creating 1-3 task items. These could even be reflection questions such as what was one new thing they learned or what is still unclear to them.

From neurobiology and cognitive psychology, we know that retention can be improved by breaking down information or content into smaller components or pieces and by connecting it to previously learned material or experiences (Orlando, 2016, 2019; Sousa, 2011; Willis, 2006). Studies have also shown that students are more likely to stay engaged or watch the complete video if the information is broken into smaller pieces around 20 minutes long (Mendez-Carajo and Wolla, 2019; Pomales-Garcia and Liu, 2006). Consider incorporating some of these ideas to increase motivation and engagement back into your course.

References:

Méndez-Carbajo, D., & Wolla, S. A. (2019). Segmenting educational content: Long-form vs. short-form online learning modules. American Journal of Distance Education, 33(2), 108–119.  doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2019.1583514

Orlando, J. (2019, November 9). Chunking content: A key to learning. The Teaching Professor. Retrieved from https://www.teachingprofessor.com/topics/online-learning/chunking-content-a-key-to-learning/

Orlando, J. (2016). Apply neurology to online videos. The Teaching Professor.  Retrieved from https://www.teachingprofessor.com/applying-neurology-to-online-videos/

Pomales-Garcia, C., and Liu, Y. (2006). Web-based distance learning technology: The impacts of web module lengths and format. American Journal of Distance Education.20(3). 163-179.  doi.org/10.1207/s15389286ajde2003_4

Sousa, D. A. (2011). How the brain learns (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Willis, J. (2006). Research-based strategies to ignite student learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).