Course Community-Building in the Time of Coronavirus: Best Practices for How to Prep Your (Probably Online) Fall Course to Maximize Student Engagement & Retention During the Uncertainty and Isolation

About this talk

Many educators who are new to online instruction lament the loss of their face-to-face instruction in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the sudden shift to emergency remote delivery. In online discussions with other instructors, many of these educators bemoan that they will be forced to teach a “boring” version of their course—one with minimal student interaction and uninspired assignments—in order to run their newly-online fall classes or to accommodate the demands of pivot pedagogy. However, with proper planning, instructors can use innovative pedagogical techniques to scaffold their courses for optimizing both synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences that energize students about the course content while also connecting them to the instructor and each other.