Preparing for Your Fully Online Semester

Leaf representing community

Harvard Extension School classes will be fully online for the 2020-2021 academic year. While the Extension School has provided online learning opportunities for our students for decades, we also know the experience will be much different this year. Many of you will be teaching from spaces you weren’t expecting to teach from and using technology you’ve never used before. The reason why we’re online — a global pandemic — means you and your students alike will be juggling many things in their lives. What does all of this mean for your class?
 
Above all, it means listening to and asking for feedback from your students is especially important this semester. On a regular basis (weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly), survey your students about what is going well in the course, what they’re struggling with, and what else they’d like to tell you. You’ll learn more about your class then you ever thought possible. It’s also likely you’ll be doing something for the first time this semester and student feedback is useful as you adjust your class for this fully online world. 

What won’t be different: the need for community in your class

Building community in an online course is essential to student success. Our students sign up for our classes to be challenged and to build connections. Frustration mounts when it’s hard to reach out to their instructor or their peers. This resonates particularly strongly now where it is likely many of your students are experiencing isolation beyond the classroom. Your students’ comfort levels with their instructor and classmates are the backbone of purposeful discussions in class. 

What will be different: the way your class community is built


Those moments where students encounter each other in hallways and get to know each other won’t be physically possible, but it doesn’t mean the same organic moments can’t happen in your class. It does mean you will want to spend some more time in your course (both during your live class and in between class sessions on Canvas) explicitly devoted to community building. Here are ways you can set the foundation for community in your course
 
P.S.: Community for our instructors is important to us, too! We know working through all the changes in your course can be daunting on your own, so we encourage you to sign up for a training or schedule a 1-on-1 appointment with us. We’re here to help you troubleshoot, design, or simply serve as your thought partner.

What won’t be different: What your students learn 


Your class is still your class. We hope how you teach your class remains intuitive to you and your goals for your students, even if the way you’ll be teaching your class is different this year. You can readily share content from a screen (such as slides, videos, and even “whiteboard” work). Students can work with each other in smaller groups via breakout rooms in Zoom and engage with each other between class sessions in Canvas. Technology is a tool that can help you meet the learning goals you’ve set out for your students and yourself, but you and your students still make up the community in which the teaching and learning happens. Again, we encourage you to sign up for a training or schedule a 1-on-1 appointment with us! The trainings will familiarize you with features and tools on Zoom and Canvas to help you reach your students. We can also chat over 1-on-1 appointments with you if there are particular elements of your class you’d like to think through.

What might be different: Class expectations


There are a lot of assumptions students can make when they are attending class in a physical classroom. For example, students will likely know that, to participate, they can raise their hand and be called on or they can stop by office hours if they have a question. That won’t necessarily be true when they are attending class on web conference or have a question in between classes. Spend some time during your first class setting these expectations. How can students participate in your web conference class (for example, using the Raise Hand button in Zoom or simply raising their hand)? Can they use the Zoom chat? We also suggest making a Question + Answer discussion board in your Canvas site that you and your teaching staff regularly check. Fielding questions over email means you might get multiple of the same question. Making a public discussion board means fellow classmates can answer questions and the whole teaching staff can streamline their responses. Here are more ways to encourage inquiry in your class