Reflections on online teaching, Part 5 As the nights get shorter, are moving into back to school time here in the United States, and many institutions have made the decision to remain online this term. As we make the move from the emergency remote teaching we did in the Spring to effective online teaching this Fall, there are a wide variety of apps and websites we can use in the classroom – and the choice can feel overwhelming at times! Here are some tips for getting used to

Reflections on Online Teaching, Part 5. Many instructors are experts at building community in the face to face classroom. We know how to get students in small groups and pairs, and to be able to gauge their interest and enjoyment in various class activities. But bonding students and creating community is possible in the online classroom; it simply requires different strategies. First, devote time specifically to getting-to-know you activities on those first days of class, jus

As we’ve discussed in my previous reflections, online teaching and learning can be not only good but in some cases better than the teaching and learning that takes place in a classroom. So how can we convince more stakeholders of the value of distance learning? How can we lead our students and learners to more of a growth mindset? We can start by creating an orientation to this new space, just as we do orientation on the first days of a school in a face-to-face environment. T

This is the third in my series of reflections on online learning. Today I’d like to talk about how to help learners and other stakeholders approach online learning with an attitude that is more likely to lead to success. Have you heard of the concept of a ‘growth mindset’? It’s researcher Carol Dweck’s idea that people primarily approach learning either from a fixed mindset, or the idea that we are innately ‘good at’ some things and ‘bad at’ others, or a growth mindset, which

In my first post reflecting on the state of online teaching in a post-Covid world, I discussed the ‘wait and see’ mentality that has caused a drop in enrollments around the world. A lot of potential students are waiting to go back to a vision of what a ‘normal’ class looks like that I believe just is not going to come back in the same way. Yes, teachers and students will have classes in the same physical space again, but online teaching and learning is here to stay. And hones

Over the past several weeks, I’ve had the great pleasure of leading a project improve the quality of online teaching and learning with a group of language schools in Colombia. In my consultation sessions, several themes have emerged, and I’m struck by the commonalities of these problems. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Bogota, Boston or Berlin, if you’re an educator, I believe we are all currently dealing with very similar challenges. One such issue is a ‘wait and see’ mentali