
Use what you know to teach online by creatively repurposing familiar tools, staying simple, and gradually exploring one tool at a time for meaningful tasks.
Design a welcoming virtual classroom mockup tailored to your avatar, using a consistent naming framework and content patterns to meet a new student where they are.
Daily reflections have students journal, video, or audio about learning with focused prompts. Teachers provide structure, feedback, and weekly submissions to build stamina and community.
Discover how to support online students through encouragement, check-ins, and help documents, and plan for the unique characteristics of online classes.
Use short one-on-one video check-ins to address questions and re-engage students, scheduling 10–15 minute Google Calendar slots over two hours with options for student–parent meetings.
Outline a week of online lessons, job aids, and weekly video summaries with one-on-one support, balancing cognitive load to about half an hour including the lesson.
Virtual Classroom Organization and Systems is designed to help teachers plan a smooth and consistent online class. It covers the systems and processes you need to consider when starting a term virtually.
This course is designed to help you think about what your virtual classroom might look like and how it might work. And it even takes a look at how teachers can be ready for a smooth transition from virtual to physical and back again if needed.
If you’re new to teaching or a veteran with years of experience teaching in the classroom, Teaching Online: Virtual Classroom Organization and Systems helps you shift your thinking into online mode. This course offers strategies you can use immediately to plan your term or year.
The course centers around the concept of keeping things: Simple, Consistent, Engaging, and Supportive. The course workbook and built-in activities encourage you to plan your own systems based on what you’ve learned in the course. You leave this course with solid ideas to apply and a direction to build off of.
The course instructor, Laura V Coulter, spent nine years as a technology and learning coach in a high school. Her career spans elementary, middle, high school, and adult learning. When schools went on lockdown for the Coronavirus, it was her job to help teachers transition into the unknown realm of virtual classrooms. She designed this course as a live workshop for a global teacher’s group and then converted it into a self-paced online course.
Thanks, @lvcoulter, for an engaging look at the virtual classroom setup. Valuable information for anyone who may be doing remote teaching this fall! #onlinelearning
-Dr. Cheryl Guy