Build your digital course

A wiki-style Q&A platform with anonymous posting where instructors endorse answers.

Activities with Piazza: Course discussion activity, Student-led questionnaire 

Enables discussion forums through real-time chat with an email threading model and enables integration with other online tools.

Course discussion activity

Padlet is an online platform that allows the user to add posts for online collaboration.

Activity with padlet (Online group discussion)

Is a tool that allows you to create and share videos, and create a video library for watching and broadcasting.

Activity with Panopto (Multi-step exercises on video, Short video recording)

Build interactive presentations with questions, polls, quizzes, slides, images, gifs, etc. for an engaging presentation. Students can answer the questions and see their responses in real-time.

Focus SOS activity

A tool to record quick videos of your screen.

Activities: Video analysis, Short video recording, Multi-step exercises on video

Wiki services can be regarded as a type of Document Collaboration Tool. They allow people to co-create and organize knowledge as well as for documenting projects.

Mural.ly is a tool for online collaborative design. It features a large number of design templates, a simple user interface, tools for voting and integration of multimedia.

Overleaf is an online LaTex editor for collaborative writing. It is often used for the creation of complex documents.

Coordinate meeting times amongst several participants by marking availability in an online calendar.

Presemo is a classroom participation system that allows for the creation of online rooms and activities, where each room has its own web address.

LMS are systems for collecting all e-educational material (e.g. videos, interactive presentations, quizzes, tasks) and converting it into an organized course.

Formerly G Suite, is a set of collaboration tools that include Gmail, Google Calendar, Meet (Video and voice conferencing), Chat, Drive (Cloud storage), collaborative documents, spreadsheets, presentation slides, forms, etc.

Shared cloud folder example

Is an online tool for creating teaching games for class interaction, learning assessment, and math labs.

Activity: Flipped Classroom

Flinga is a Finnish cloud service for co-creation that offers tools for brainstorming, commenting, mind maps and collages.

Activities with Flinga: Online Group Discussion, Local customs and manners

Miro is an online collaborative design tool. It uses an empty canvas or the option of different templates so participants can engage in co-creation or co-design activities.

Slack is a chat-based collaboration hub with features for handling attachments. It allows for the creation of private and public channels for sending messages.

Is an online environment for organizing meetings, chatting, formulating tasks, and schedules. It is connected to a cloud service that allows you to post materials.

Activities with Teams: Multi-step exercises on video, Short video recording, Touch Blue

Zoom is an online meeting, webinar, and teaching tool. It allows the creation of student subgroups during classes, has chat functions, and recording capabilities.

Breakout Pitches Activity, Practical group exercises

Remember your face and voice

Use conversational language, with a quick tempo and enthusiasm, and try to use real-life examples. Try to keep your face visible, and practice your presentation skills, if necessary.

Brame, 2016; Tavaila, 2022

Clear instructions everywhere

Provide clear instructions before the activity and keep the instructions and time frames visible during the activity, especially when using breakout rooms.

Tavaila, 2022.

“You remember 30% of what you see and 20% of what you hear” (Dale, 1969)

Use attractive visuals

Consider colors, gradients and page spacing in your presentations, use highlighted keywords and changes in contrast, use high-quality, relevant photos to keep content interesting, and avoid unnecessary elements or extra words.

Tavaila, 2022; Brect, 2012; Brame, 2016

Connect to previous material

At the beginning of the lecture, make sure you give a clear agenda of the lecture, a summary of the current stand on the course’s timeline, how the lecture connects to previous and following lectures, and the time for the breaks.

Brame, 2016; Tavaila 2022

Use multiple screens

When hosting an online session, it is highly recommended to use at least two screens. For hybrid sessions, two laptops, a projector, a speaker and a technical assistant can make the process more fluid.

Link to example

Stay connected

Send out welcome messages before the course, have kick-off meetings, send weekly announcements about upcoming assignments, and emails about inactivity or missing assignments; have virtual office hours.

The Design Book for Online Learning (Huhtanen, 2019)

Give feedback and assess continuously

Formative and constructive feedback, such as peer review or iterative tasks, effectively supports students in the learning process.

Hattie 2009 in The Design Book for Online Learning (Huhtanen, 2019)

Manage expectations

Pretests and motivation letters help students to orient themselves and prepare for the course. Make participation expectations clear from the beginning. Tell students whether they are expected to participate or not. Try to remain constant in your lectures’s policies

Hattie & Yates 2014; Huhtanen, 2019; Tavaila 2022

Provide a channel for social interaction

Establish a social interaction channel to motivate your students to attend the course for its entire duration.

The Design Book for Online Learning (Huhtanen, 2019)

Activate, activate, activate

Use activities such as questions, quizzes, gamification or discussions to compensate for the weaker relationship in an online environment. Make sure that your students learn actively by designing your lessons around work tasks or problems.

Salmon 2002 in The Design Book for Online Learning (Huhtanen, 2019); Clark and Mayer, 2016

“You remember around 90% of what you do (Dale 90%)

Keep content organized

Keep lectures logical and planned, short, and ending at the right time. Organize the group content and exercises into thematic modules to prevent an online course from being confusing.

Huhtanen, 2019; Brame 2016; Tavaila 2022

Be concise

Identify core content of the lecture and weed out superfluous information because students’ natural attention span for online courses is about 5-6 minutes.

Hattie & Yates 2014 in The Design Book for Online Learning (Huhtanen, 2019)