Faculty Guide for Online Teaching

.Clear and Concise Instructions / Expectations.

Everyone has their own teaching style and approach to designing in-class experiences. On-line classes allow for similar diversity, allowing students to experience an array of educative possibilities.

Slightly different is the asynchronous ways on-line classes often operate. This requires faculty to be attentive to providing clear and concise instructions and expectations for students. This has a number of benefits for you and your students:

• First, it allows students to minimize their worry about if they are doing the assignment/project right.
• Second, clear instructions that students can easily follow means faculty have less emails from students asking for clarification.
• Third, students and faculty are able to focus on the content of the assignments/projects more fully than worrying about how to do it and expectations.

Remember, we are doing this rapid transition in the middle of the semester. You have already developed a rapport with your students and most likely already have key parts of course assignments and projects that you are tweaking/revising for the online context. Don't forget the work you have already done to provide students with clear instructions and expectations. Moving them on-line is, in part, make sure that in an asynchronous format, students are more able to understand quickly your expectations for their creative and critical work.

Some quick (potentially) useful things:

1. Use bullet lists to break the assignment/project down.
2. Refer students to a rubric that articulates the expectations in more detail.
3. Have a colleague read your instructions to see if they get a clear sense of your instructions and expectations.