Ideas for an Online Classroom

Keep students engaged with humorous material.young woman making an online purchase image by Paul Hill from Fotolia.com

Online classrooms provide a way for students to have a quality education and are convenient for both teachers and students. Using an online classroom also can bring additional challenges to the process of designing an effective curriculum. Techniques used in a traditional classroom setting require modifications in order to foster a successful online classroom experience.

Personal Connections

A study published in January 2010 by the Sloan Consortium notes that online course enrollment in fall 2008 showed a 17% increase over the previous year. With the rapidly growing number of students enrolling in an online course, teachers' ability maintain personal connections with students remains an important goal. Go a step beyond a simple personal introduction and encourage students to connect with each other. Use a discussion board or forum to foster interaction, and create assignments requiring students to get to know each other. Having telephone or video conference hours or homework help as opposed to only using email also can help students stay connected and feel more involved.

Prevent the feeling of isolation in the online classroom by assigning students to group projects. Even without a face-to-face meeting, students can collaborate by email, phone or video chat to work on a project. A distance group project gives students the benefits of learning how to work as a team while still experiencing the convenience of an online classroom. Because online classrooms have the potential to attract more self-directed and independent learners, group projects ensure that students grow in all directions. They also help students prepare for a career that involves working with a team or on a project over a long distance.

Students can perceive online classrooms as a stream of cut-and-dried information to simply absorb and regurgitate. This can lead to students losing interest and eventually not learning much from the course. Adding humor to the materials helps teachers to better hold students' interests and give them a more positive association with the class. Humor in the online classroom helps both teachers and students better enjoy the experience.

As online classes grow, technology grows with them. Online classes can be more than just a list of slides or recorded lectures. Options exist for online course management software and online interactive classrooms that provide additional functionality for teachers and students. Teachers also can make use of videoconferencing to add interaction to the online classroom.