Teaching on-line: best practices

Hi,
I am new to on-line teaching and I'd like to check what best practices can be used to deliver participatory permaculture design courses on the different topics they include.
I am aware of Miro-like platforms, which allow for many participants to work at the same time. But, apart form specific platforms, how can I structure my sessions
so that they do not become a one-way delivery only job, such as a teacher showing a powerpoint from start to end?
Are there any resources worth exploring on this subject?
Best regards

I am not aware of sources.  I have taught on-line and my #1 concern was “tone”. Words, phrases, jokes, etc. can come off entirely different on-line than when spoken. Be especially concerned about…in fact, avoid….dry humor.

My best results, discussion wise, was when I could share real life situations.

If a student asks a question, throw it out to the class to answer if time allows. Be sure to always answer the question yourself…eventually.

Also, the publishing standards here at Permies has some excellent ideas on non threatening communication.

Are you thinking like a Zoom or Facebook live class? Perhaps someone here had experience had Covid online teaching experience and could offer what platform they used. Perhaps there is a homeschooling app or platform that could be used.  I do agree with tone and no pre-planned humor. Things happen live so unforeseen humor is or can be appreciated.

Are you looking to work with a classroom of folks face to face or conduct just something an individual can do online by themselves?

I have occasionally signed up for the individual type classes though at the time my computer was not compatible with their platform so I never do that.

Doing something on Zoom or a similar platform might be doable.

Robert Ray wrote:Are you thinking like a Zoom or Facebook live class? Perhaps someone here had experience had Covid online teaching experience and could offer what platform they used. Perhaps there is a homeschooling app or platform that could be used.  I do agree with tone and no pre-planned humor. Things happen live so unforeseen humor is or can be appreciated.

Thank you all for the replies so far.

I am planning to use zoom as a main session delivery. If I have enough time I might load everying on a moodle site in order to keep everything easily available and have sort of classroom availabe at any time, with a built in forum, etc. Otherwise session related materials are already on a Mega.nz account.

Anne Miller wrote:Are you looking to work with a classroom of folks face to face or conduct just something an individual can do online by themselves?

I have occasionally signed up for the individual type classes though at the time my computer was not compatible with their platform so I never do that.

Doing something on Zoom or a similar platform might be doable.

Hello Anne, the idea is to have zoom sessions where all course participants are there at the same time. The course is actually hybrid in that half of the course time will be on-line and the other half face2face.

I teach and sometimes some of it is online! And I've had some formal instruction in current thinking about best practices. As a caveat, I find that student learning outcomes tend to be poorer online than in person no matter what you do, on the whole, even with identical content, and I think the reason is that students need to be more self-directed and disciplined to learn from videos and other online materials. But for some students it works great.

Here are some tips:

Short videos (5-10 minutes) are far more effective than longer ones at holding attention and communicating ideas. If you have more content, break it into separate videos.

If you have a way to break up a video by asking the student to pause, write down their own ideas, and then check back in, that can help replicate in-person teaching methods where students think and problem solve (as long as the student actually does it).

There are tools you can use to create online interactive activities, quiz questions, and other components that help with interaction and engagement. A lot of them aren't free, so it helps if you teach with a school that subscribes to some of these services. But you can probably do some basics with free tools like google. Videos alone can create the "illusion of learning," where you think that because you have checked off a task and watched a video, you have learned everything you saw. Self-testing (where you don't immediately reveal all the answers) is a more effective study habit, so building in some tasks that accomplish this can really help students learn better.

If the course is offered to a group instead of being completely independent and asynchronous, you can build in group discussion boards to share ideas, even if there are no synchronous lecture meetings. I have found that having one required discussion board at the end of each module where the students are instructed to just ask one thing they are unsure about is enough to get them interacting sometimes, and it also offers an opportunity to follow up and answer their questions.

Hope this is useful!