What You Should Know Before Teaching Online Courses

Compared with face-to-face teaching, online teaching provides faculty with a wide array of effective tools to enhance teaching and learning

If you plan to offer a course online, here are the steps you should take:

1. Familiarize yourself with the types of online courses offered at UA Fort Smith
2. Schedule your training and obtain certification
3. Develop your online course
4. Have your online course peer and student reviewed for improvement
5. Gain approval from your college dean for the release of your course
6. Seek help from Instructional Support, especially when teaching online for the first time.

Faculty should be aware that online teaching demands more attention and time than the face-to-face instruction.

• To teach online, preparation is much more demanding. You must develop the course ahead of time, and maintain daily contact with your students.
   
• To teach online, you must rethink how to present learning materials and you must find effective ways to translate face-to-face experiences in the traditional classroom to the online learning environment. Since online instructors cannot observe students directly while they are learning, the instructors have to design the courses to anticipate students' needs and provide effective ways to communicate with the students.
   
• Students' questions can be frequent and numerous, even the students who are reserved in a traditional classroom setting may be actively involved in online courses.
   
• Since feedback must be timely, faculty members have to be prepared to spend more time in responding to students' needs.