Top 10 Do’s And Don’ts Of Online Learning

1. Don’t give busy work - yeah it’s easy to gather online work sheets that are already created for you and give students what you think is about 50 minutes of work, but number 1, kids work in all different ways so what takes one student 25 minutes to finish at home may take another 3 hours. Keep it simple and give them no more than three tasks per assignment.
2. Don’t give all essays or short answer worksheets - again this might be tempting because it is easy, but it is monotonous, doesn’t give good learning results, and takes a ton of time grading (if you are doing that right). So make sure you are choosing or creating different types of activities that will allow for different types of assessment. Maybe instead of the student writing an essay, they create a video presentation of them just talking about it. Or they can put together a memory board to explain the concepts (take a picture of it and upload it or email it to the teacher). 
3. Do make your own videos - yes, but all means find those videos that are already created which would fit perfectly with you lecture (by all means we don’t want to reinvent the wheel), but by making you own videos you are no only putting your personal touch to the lecture, but you are also making a personal connecting with the students. It is very important that the student doesn’t just feel like a number
4. Don’t overwhelm - this one I am guilty of from time to time. Whit my subject matter there is so much good information out there but too much at once is overwhelming and your students shut down making it more difficult to even get started. Remember the rule of three. I typically have three ways students can learn the same topic online; videos, articles, and tutorials. I always and in writing and I stress in class that these are only there if they need more help and they do not need to go through all the content. They can choose which way they learn better and just follow those. 
5. Give clear assessment and feedback (in a timely manner)- although it is tempting and time saving to just give students the a, b, c, .... grade, students need to know what they did right and what they did wrong. Always give praises, even for the ones that completely messed it up. They will work harder for you. And make sure it is within a week, if it is longer than that then not only have they lost interest in how you grade it, but bad habits might have set in and they will repeat mistakes.
6. Use games whenever possible - older generations feel that games are silly, a waste of time, or just for free time, but like it or not it is part of our world and the younger generations lives. So embrace it and use it to find ways to learn. My kids favorite games growing up were the online math games and math games for the wii fit, leapster, and computer. I went and found as many learning games as I could for them because they felt like they were playing but really they were learning. So instead of just giving students a lecture, give them an online scavenger hunt. The main concepts of the lecture can be found in clues and they have to go to different learning sites to find the answers. Or, look online to see what games there are already there, you may be surprise.
7. Don’t keep lecturing the same way over and over - video lectures are good but use an online book for another lesson, a game for another, and a tutorial for yet another lesson. Although this way of teaching may not be consistent, your students do not always learn the same way and depending on their age they may not know how they best learn. I teach college level classes so I keep mine consistent at their ages and that them explore the extra mixed content on their own. My students love this because if they didn’t quite get what I said in class, they know they can go to our online classroom and find the same topic in the format they learn best in.
8. Kids feel stress too - don’t forget that kids are stressed and sometimes they are just as stressed as adults. Whether they live in a home that is not conducive to learning, they have a learning disability, or life is just happening very fast for them, piling on homework, busy work, reading, essays, etc is just adding to that and causing them to shut down, breakdown, or even worse. I will never forget when I found my 9 year old son, in the basement, in our theatre room crying over an open science book. He has a worksheet he was supposed to fill out as homework but he couldn’t find the answers, he couldn’t concentrate with all the commotion in the house (hence being in the quietest room of the house), and he had been reading the pages over and over. He had been working on this for about an hour and 20 minutes when I found him. I wanted him to just stop and take a break but my son is not like that. He won’t stop until it is finished which can be good and bad thing. So I took his homework, read the question, found the topic they were asking about, and proceeded to look up in the back of the book what page it could be on. He had no clue what I was doing. No one had showed him that you could look up where topics are in the index in the back of a schoolbook I guess they just assumed that all the kids knew this. Now my kids are very independent when it comes to their learning and don’t often come to us for help despite are constant asking, but I used this incident as a learning lesson.
9. Let students know what the topics are that they are learning - I know this seems like a no-brainer but typically students will concentrate more on the lessons they know they are supposed to be learning. I have all my lessons broken down by week and each week there are topics and lesson concepts that they are to learn. I also say things like ‘this will be on a quiz’, or ‘you are going to need this information for the homework assignment’, especially when I know I am losing their attention.
10. Do communicate, communicate, communicate! - all too often teachers assume students will understand because they wrote it down. The problem is that things can be misinterpreted, confusing, and all too often missing key information. This happens when we have to work fast. So give the instructions to someone who doesn’t know much about your class and see if they understand. I have been going through my children’s most current assignments with them because they are confused by what they are supposed to do. As I am a teacher myself I can sort of figure out what they are asking for but there are other times I am just as confused.