Online Teaching

This section contains resources focused on teaching completely online courses.

Overview

Most courses during the academic year at Ithaca College have in-person sessions that meet one or more times per week.  While courses often have homework and assignments that students do outside of class most direct instructions happens in class.   An increasing number of completely online courses are being offered during the summer and winter sessions as well as during the academic-year. These courses may be delivered synchronously, asynchronously, guided, or self-paced. Online courses tend to rely on the LMS (Canvas) and other technologies to share content and activities.

During the pandemic instructors and students had no choice but to plunge into online learning. Well-planned online learning experiences are  meaningfully different from courses offered online in response to a crisis.

The resources in this section are available to help you plan and create quality and engaging online experiences for your students.

Resources in this section

See “Designing online courses for condensed terms” for some suggestions when teaching a full semester course in a shorter online format.

Use a downloadable “Online Course Quality Checklist” to make sure you hit some of the research-based criteria for a quality online course.

See “Student tips for online learning” so you can coach students on how to stay organized and manage their time in an online course.

See the blog post,  Instructor Presence in the Online Class – Key to Learner Success for some tips to connect with your students.

See Camera Use in Live, Remote Teaching for some pros and cons on cameras on or off when teaching on Zoom.

Key Terms

Online refers to a course modality where most of the content and activities occur online.  It can also be referred to as distance learning.

Blended courses involve face-to-face class sessions that are accompanied by online materials and activities. Online materials supplement but aren’t intending to replace face-to-face class time. Most IC courses are blended. 

Hybrid  courses' online components are intended to replace a portion of face-to-face time.  Online interactions can be synchronous (Zoom) or asynchronous (Discussion boards/Voicethread).  

Flipped courses a structured so students learn fundamental knowledge prior to class through readings or video lectures and expand on that knowledge through activities conducted in class with support from instructor.

Synchronous – Interactions happen simultaneously online or in person.

Asynchronous – Interactions  with instructor and other students don’t happen in real-time.   

Hyflex – combines face-to-face and online instruction simultaneously into one course session.  Some students may participate in person or online.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned transitioning to online learning it’s that there is some material, lectures and solo readings, that are BETTER delivered asynchronously, even if we have in person classes.”

IC faculty member

Feedback and suggestions

This section is a growing and evolving resource. If you have corrections, suggestions, or content that you think would be valuable to add please contact us.