The ON Switch

Best practices of online teaching

THE BEST PART about writing an article like this is that I do not labor under the illusion that I can ever be right. As soon as I list what I consider to be my best practices –

• Wear red and blue
• Stand up at odd moments
• Face away from the camera
• Chew a lot of gum
• Watch reruns of Bonanza in class

– someone will always shoot me down. Everyone, when it comes to best practices, thinks they have the best practice. Ever. I am not trying to put down anyone who may have come up with a list of his or her own, but I do think that teaching online comes down to simple and basic elements. Except for the fact that you are not in the same room with your students, teaching online requires the same disciplines as teaching in a classroom.

Like many professors and teachers, this semester was my first for teaching online. I have been teaching luxury branding, marketing, advertising, and many other classes on the China campus of Skema Business School in Suzhou. Due to the lockdown and closure of schools because of COVID-19, the classes had to be conducted online for those students who remained in China for this period.

The results? According to most of the students (and if any of you are reading now, please confirm or deny this), the classes went along fairly well. The main obstacles to teaching online are the instability of the Internet or Wi-Fi and the fact that most students are at home or in another less formal environment with many distractions. In my case, my golden retriever did not always appreciate my lectures and would come to interrupt them.

But good practices in terms of teaching were not very much different than those that get used in a classroom situation. Of course, my experience is with relatively small classes online, up to 10 students, and large amphitheater-type classes would have different needs. For my smaller classes, best practice consists of best practice for teachers everywhere. 

Being There

I recently saw a graphic, published by Arizona State University, which lists seven things that are considered to be best practice. But if you are NOT currently practicing them, then maybe you should consider going into research instead of teaching online (or offline).

The first one already had me scratching my head. Instructor presence? This is the equivalent of the IT support guy asking you if your computer is switched on. And it seems to imply that you can have online classes and teaching without being present in the group. When I was growing up, that was called “summer vacation.”

If you are not planning to be present online with your students, then I put it to you that you are not actually teaching. Assigning a lot of reading, some essay questions, and perhaps even administrating an online exam is not enough in my view. You need to be there online, just as you would be in the classroom, in order to field questions from eager students and encourage the less enthusiastic to get into it. Any kind of teacher, from primary school to post-graduate, is there not only to convey knowledge but also to instill his or her passion for that knowledge and its discovery. The passion does not have to be wild leaping about, but it comes through in the voice, in the eyes, and in the delivery of the material.

The students will have to do the reading anyway.

Civility is not Dead

From a purely practical point of view, an online classroom is better in many ways than a physical one. When fifteen people are all online if everyone talks no one can hear. Therefore online teaching re-introduces the civility of taking turns that is sometimes lost in the real classroom. In a small group, the instructor can go around from one person to the next and ask questions or get feedback. It is less likely that anyone gets left out of a discussion. The turn-taking also allows a subject to develop.

Another advantage is that the use of slides can be at once as a visual aid but also as text. Since the students and in front of their screens, you can include small texts to read which you would not be able to project onto a large room. There is much more intimacy and the impression of a one-to-one relationship with the student. In my experience, however, it is more than an impression. I feel that I know my students better after a semester like this.

Our job is the effective delivery of the material to be taught, and it works when we ensure that at least some of the students apprehend some of our regard for the subject, that they understand that there is a good reason to learn it and that it will be useful at some stage in their lives.

As the health crisis continues to have an effect on education and the decisions of academic institutions, I expect we will be seeing many more innovations in online teaching in the coming months. I look forward to trying them out. The tools will improve and become better and better, but we – as the teachers and professors who will use them – must also become better and better, looking to give and improve as much as we can.

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Chris Farmer owns and operates notapipe brand consulting, a branding agency based in Belgrade, Serbia, and has been teaching masters level classes in luxury brand management, digital marketing, and advanced advertising as well as classes including leadership, management, globalization, and geopolitics at Skema Business School in Suzhou, China, since 2012.