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Online teaching activities

On this page we have compiled a list of core teaching activities for teaching online.

The teaching formats below offer an alternative to regular campus based teaching. Each format include guides and inspirational materials to help you get started with teaching online.

In spite of the given circumstances it’s possible to continue the classes on the university. When planning for online teaching, you have to consider how you can support the students' learning in the best way possible. The following are suggestions that you can modify yourself:

Online teaching session

Online teaching sessions or webinars are held using a video conferencing system that supports online chats and video conferences. It allows you to hold the lecture or small class teaching in an online setting. Please note that an online teaching session should not be structured with long monologues as we know them from the classic lectures. Instead, they should be composed of several varying elements. You can follow this guide for teaching online with Webinar.

You can make the online teaching situations engaging for the students by combining them with other learning activities. For example, you can arrange ongoing group discussions or include one or more of the learning activities listed below. You can also invite an external partner into the online classroom, e.g. a researcher or another type of expert.

Topical videos

You can choose to record your presentation or lecture on a specific topic on video and share it with the students. You can record yourself with your mobile phone or webcam, or you can record your slideshow while speaking. In this way, the student can get an introduction to the subject before you meet for an online teaching session.

If you choose to make a video presentation you should consider making it as short and accurate as possible. It may be beneficial to write a screenplay to clarify the structure of your video and to cut out the less significant points. You can follow this guide on how to produce video content, or read more on the pages video and audio.

Inspiration:

Guides for digital tools:

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Online teacher supervision and feedback

You can supervise students on major assignments or give them oral feedback on their individual or group products online as online chats and video conferences. Various videoconferencing systems provide an opportunity for having conversations such as supervision and feedback. In contrast to written feedback, it allows the students to ask for your comments and for elaborations if there is something they do not understand. In addition, screen sharing ensures that both you and the students can make specific suggestions in the written text. For this type of activity, you can also use online writing collaboration.

 

Online group work and peer feedback

You can facilitate online group work through online chats and video conferences where students can meet and discuss academic topics, give each other peer feedback or collaborate on other group products. You can ask the students to prepare a blog for your class where they can discuss a subject or post their assignments and give each other written feedback. You can also ask the students to produce a group assignment through online writing collaboration. This way of working in groups makes it possible for all students to contribute to a common and simultaneous knowledge production. This can benefit the students' professional understanding, their formulation skills and argumentation skills.

You should be aware of how to communicate the activities and assignments to the students. It has to be done very clearly so they are able to complete the work without you being present or able to support them.

Inspiration:

Guides for digital tools:

   

Individual online learning activities

The students’ individual learning activities can be facilitated online and be a supplement to other online teaching activities. By asking students to upload their individual materials in Blackboard, it can be used as a starting point for a discussion in groups or in the online teaching session. 

For example, you can ask students to reflect on the subject by sharing their notes, explaining specific concepts, asking questions about the academic subject, or reflecting on their own learning process. All of these activities can be shared online and be processed in different ways. 

You can also consider making questions or formulating exercises to each text and ask the students to answer or solve based on their reading.

 

   

Building a shared online ressource

You can facilitate knowledge sharing by asking the students to draw up an online resource which they fill out together. This can be done on a blog that can be used for discussion of academic topics or as a bank with notes for the content or methods of the course. In this way, the students can collaborate on producing explanatory texts on the central concepts, theories or overall topics of the subject. As a teacher, you can distribute the topics between the students so that they each have something to write about in the shared resource. This can then be the starting point for an online discussion.

You can also ask the students to produce video or audio about a subject and upload it to the online ressource.