While most schools plan for full in-person returns in the fall, plans are not 100 percent certain right now. Variables such as more contagious COVID strains, approval and availability of vaccines for children younger than 12, and local COVID outbreaks could force schools back to online learning for weeks at a time.
Teachers and students learned a lot about online learning during the past 15 months–what works and what doesn’t, strategies to engage with one another, and how to form meaningful relationships during online, hybrid, or distanced in-person learning.
During ISTELive 21, Dr. Jennifer Courduff, a professor of education at Azusa Pacific University; Dr. Peter Hessling, an assistant teaching professor at North Carolina State University; Dr. Jean Kiekel, an assistant professor at the University Of St. Thomas; and Dr. Susan Poyo, an associate professor of education at Franciscan University shared four ways to create engaging online learning opportunities for students.
1. Engaging through organization
“When you’re teaching online, whether you’re doing synchronous or asynchronous, one of the most important things is how you organize things. As much as possible, you want to keep things consistent,” Kiekel said.
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