About Online Teaching

Teaching online takes some rethinking about our relationship to our curriculum. The following materials—a mixture of our programmatic content and other helpful resources produced predominantly by the Baruch Center for Teaching and Learning—are intended to help you with the process of preparing for and running an online course.

Course Organizations: Synchronous and Asynchronous

Your course will run either synchronously (the default) or asynchronously, depending on the selection you chose. Synchronous classes tend to run most like the face-to-face class, with what would have been live sessions now on Zoom or some other video conferencing platform. Asynchronous sessions tend to run most like what were already fully online classes or hybrid courses.

If your course will run synchronously: 

You will have meeting times listed on CUNYfirst, and can use them to hold synchronous sessions, such as Zoom meetings.

Synchronous classes will run much like in-person ones, with a combination of “in-class” (for most people this means “on Zoom”) activities and out-of-class work, such as essays or projects.

If your course will run asynchronously:

You will have no listed meeting items on CUNYfirst, but you may want to ask your students to attend weekly meetings, record them (with their consent), and ask students who couldn’t make the meeting to review the recorded one and write some kind of engaged confirmation that they viewed and thought about it. You additionally may want to consider the role and structure of individual conferences in an asynchronous model, which could prove valuable for humanizing the experience.

Asynchronous classes will run with more material presented for students to consider on their own. This might mean building course modules, videos, interactive text, outside readings or other resources, or some other combination of material that they consume (and ideally interact with in some way). This requires a great deal of preparation but may prove a very useful course module for delivering content to be consumed on students’ own time (with clear and detailed deadlines), and then prioritizing hearing from students synchronously (such as in a conference) about their own projects and ideas.

The asynchronous class can be a much scarier jump, but it also can prove to be human and interactive in interesting ways (I—Seth—am writing this now to you in the middle of teaching one, and loving how much humanity I’m getting from my students even in this form) and doesn’t necessarily require a heap of technological know-how, but instead a thoughtful use of one or a few platforms.

Steps to Building Your Online Course

1. Utilize the Baruch four-week online course prep guide. 

This guide was developed by the Center for Teaching and Learning at Baruch. I (Seth) was on the small team that built it, and made sure that the language here speaks to the teaching of writing, among other disciplines. The four-week guide is a robust option for guided development of your course and a primer on online pedagogy. What follows is essentially a summary of some of that material (also written by me, Seth, with specifically the program in mind), while the CTL prep guide is the base camp for your needs. Additionally, I encourage you to make an appointment with one of our staff—I’m an option—at the CTL to discuss your specific class) is the base camp for your needs.

2. Start with the tech you already know how to use.

For some, that’s a lot. For others, that’s a little. Start by using the technologies most familiar to you to build your course, then build out your skills from there. Trying to use a whole suite of platforms you’ve never used before—in a situation where there are others you already have used—can be overwhelming for anyone.

3. Survey your students to gather key information about them early on in the course.

Give your students a survey to complete in the very first week of the course. Get a sense of how and when they are planning on doing the work in your course, and what they feel like their strengths, weaknesses, comforts, and discomforts are.

Ask them questions about their access to technology, what devices they have, whether they are sharing devices and the internet with household members, whether they are commuting, and whether they have access to streaming services like Netflix.

4. Zoom fatigue is real.

For many of us, we’ll be holding our synchronous sessions on Zoom, as it most replicates the face-to-face experience. However, there are some distinct differences, one being that using Zoom is much more exhausting on the eyes and the body than being in the classroom. Try incorporating breaks into your Zoom sessions—but more importantly consider how often you really need to meet on Zoom, and what content and activities could be relegated to other, asynchronous spaces of course content, such as your course platform.

5. Use captions, transcripts, and alt-text to make your class accessible and ADA compliant.

Zoom recordings automatically generate captions that students can see if the video is recorded in the cloud.

Zoom recordings also create transcripts that you can share with your students.

Images you put in Blackboard and Blogs@Baruch can be given “alt-text” descriptions (alt-text is synonymous with image descriptions of what the image is of) for visually impaired students who are using a screen reader. Here are descriptions of adding alt-text on WordPress (Blogs@Baruch is a WordPress site) and on Blackboard.

When you put in a link, instead of pasting in the URL of the link, use a hyperlink by highlighting text and making the text a link. The phrase you use in your hyperlink should clearly state where the link goes and what’s in it (don’t just say “click here”). Here’s a quick guide to accessible hyperlinks.

For more, this tip sheet from the Director of Disability of Services at Baruch is very helpful in considering the accessibility of your course.

6. Slow it down (generally).

Students will need to be given some guidance through the expectations of your course in and beyond the syllabus, the platforms you are going to use, and the ways you want them to interact and engage.

Try making the first unit and couple of weeks of your course a tutorial for students to try out each of the platforms and interactive methods you want them to use, so they can get their questions out early and everyone can be swiftly onboarded to your platforms. The earlier you can troubleshoot (and contact the helpdesk if you need: helpdesk@barch.cuny.edu), the faster you can assume your students can see and interact with your material without tech and access issues getting in the way.

7. Think of this fall version of your course as a “draft.”

So if you don’t have fancy videos or facy tech, think of that as a later draft thing.

Give yourself some flexibility in mid-semester plans. Try using your first unit as a trial run of your plans and course schedule. And don’t be afraid to slow things down further, if that’s what you feel like you need after you get the class started.

8. Prioritize low-bandwidth teaching options.

Bandwidth refers to the amount of internet connection required to do what’s going on. Here’s a great article to get started with thinking about low-bandwidth teaching.

Low-bandwidth tech maximizes your flexibility and accessibility. Even if you feel comfortable with using more complex and high-bandwidth technologies, such as group video conferences or pre-recorded video, try to offer options for students to engage with the course material with lower-bandwidth options as well, such as discussion boards, text-based web pages, group chat, collaborative documents like Google Docs, and email. These are more likely to be spaces that students—especially students who may have slower internet connections, shared devices and web access at home, and face-to-face jobs and commutes—can access quickly and from a variety of devices, including their phones.

Please bring your phones to class. Banning phone use may be your policy of face-to-face teaching, but here the cell phone is a boon for your ways of connecting. Smartphone-optimized applications and text that can be viewed in a browser help speed up and universalize students’ access to your teaching materials, and provide quick opportunities for students to connect depending on how you setup your course to include them. Consider how you incorporate cell phone usage as a form of interactivity in your course.  

9. Choose your course platform or platforms.

A platform is a web technology you can use to build out your course content, materials, and activities. What platforms will best suit your needs for your course? Your platforms will be where you house your course content. 

Blogs @ Baruch. For many, the Blogs @ Baruch WordPress platform will help you create a website and add your students as “contributors,” so they can submit blog posts to the site as course writing. Blogs @ Baruch is managed by the Baruch Center for Teaching and Learning.

Blackboard. For others, the clear answer is Blackboard. Blackboard can’t be beat at Baruch for versatility. Students can view readings that you post there. They can participate in discussions, send messages, submit papers (that you can grade with Blackboard), and use a robust smartphone app to access the Blackboard site. For more information about using Blackboard for your course, check out Blackboard’s very helpful and robust help site. Resources there can also assist with getting started on a Blackboard course site. Blackboard at Baruch is managed by the Baruch Computing and Technology Center (or BCTC). 

10. Decide how your students will interact in the course.

How will your students connect? As we know from our experiences teaching face-to-face, student interaction is key to maintaining a healthy and vibrant classroom culture. Students simply learn as much from each other as they do from us. Be sure to choose a method to maintain that interaction, and figure out what role it plays in your course design. In an online environment, it’s good for students to have relatively straightforward and low-stakes ways of demonstrating their engagement and seeing other students also engaged in the course.

Slack groups and channels. Some instructors have been using the online application Slack for keeping in touch with their students. Slack is essentially a messaging system, not unlike texting, for a particular group. It’s often used in office culture. You can use Slack on your phone, or just on your browser. You can set when you are available, or host open “office hours” to communicate by chat on Slack. You and students can both easily communicate with individuals, groups, or the whole class, and you can use Slack to send announcements. For more information about using Slack, check out Slack’s how-to page. Or reach out to me (Seth), as I’m using Slack right now with my summer students.

Blackboard discussions and groups. Instructors have also used Blackboard to maintain community and interaction with students, in a combination of the message board and peer groups, which can be created and managed on the Blackboard site.

Blogs @ Baruch posts and comments. can also help facilitate interaction among students between the posting and commenting functions of the site. Students can participate in threaded conversations in the comments section of your and their posts.

Seth Graves: I developed a few spaces in my class to gauge their engagement. On my course site, I developed weekly “modules” of pages they needed to read and consider before moving into the blog and essay assignments. At the bottom of each page I created a “leave a comment” prompt for students to respond to. I also created a Slack group for the course and included a #random channel, for students to talk to each other and amuse each other. They use it quite a bit.

Chris Campbell: Most of my class ended up being conducted on Slack. We used it daily for text-based conversations—individually, with the class, and among peer groups. We also had a #random channel for humor and oddities that kept the “classroom” a kind of lively and recognized space.

11. Decide how you will define participation and attendance.

In an online environment, participation can be a more nebulous thing. You can encourage students to show their face and use audio in your Zoom meetings, but you can’t make them. You can encourage participation in a Zoom chat, but it can be hard to use as a check-in for all of your students. This semester, we’ll have to be extra flexible with our students while also being clear about our course’s schedule, deadlines, and expectations. Try to give your students multiple ways to demonstrate their engagement and presence in the course.

You can try to tailor whatever online platforms you use for interaction and engagement. If you use a Blogs @ Baruch site to deliver your material, try utilizing the ability for added students to leave comments. If you want your students to work in groups, try encouraging them to use collaborative spaces like shared Google Docs or group message boards on Blackboard.

For more information on participation and attendance, and how to clearly define your expectations for your students’ engagement in your class, check out the Center for Teaching and Learning suggestions for updating your pedagogy.

12. Develop your course arc and structure.

Okay, now that the online teaching concerns are starting to get covered, you can finally move back into the stuff you do all the time: building your course structure, materials, and schedule. Keeping a course arc is more important than ever so that students can track progress in the course without having the opportunity to ask questions to talk with you privately in the face-to-face classroom. They may have a significantly harder time finding their own time to reach out to you.

Check out the weeks of the CTL online course prep guide for conversations and events around developing course units and thinking about how you’ll adapt your assignments.

13. Consider prioritizing student choice in the way you design your assignments.

How could you use the online spaces you choose to model the kinds of engagement you want students to make, and then opening up your assignments for them to choose their own topics and materials with the process they’ve learned in your class?

14. Generate a clear schedule of how you will deliver material, when you will meet with students, and when you release materials on your course platform(s).

Consistency in your schedule will be a powerful way to keep students on the same page. If you can use an evenly paced calendar to create a rhythm in your course, your students won’t keep having to look up when certain content is due or how to find materials.

15. Place your course arc and structure into your platform.

Try to plot out what your strategy is for doing this before you begin, to save time. For example my (Seth) strategy for my Blogs@Baruch course site planning was to open a new tab for each subsequent page I wanted to build in a weekly module—which allowed me to link the pages by editing them backwards (from most recent tab to oldest).