How to Manage Teaching Online

In this season of isolation and shelter-in-place, many teachers have suddenly found themselves teaching at a distance. There are all kinds of technological and pedagogical challenges for this, obviously. But working from home provides another whole challenge of its own.

I had an email from one of my grad students that named this challenge pretty squarely. He reached out, knowing that I teach online a lot, and wondered how I manage teaching online. I was glad he asked! He asked several questions, which I've included below, along with some of my thinking to respond to each of them. 

I should note that while some of these are aligned to research-based best practices, a lot of this is anecdotal examples of things that I have found that work for me. Consider this a case study in managing the work of teaching online, as developed through practice, experimentation, (some) research, and a bit of the school of hard knocks too.

Image by Thomas Lefebvre via Unsplash

How you schedule your day around your work?

• I keep my normal “during the school year” schedule as much as possible. I still get up early (not quite at early, I guess—6:30 instead of 5:45) and do my normal morning exercise/hygiene/breakfast routine.
• I usually work for a few hours in the morning before taking a break for lunch, and take my dog for a walk. (Having time away from my laptop is really important to keep up productivity.)
• I then usually work again for a few hours in the afternoon, and I usually try to be “done” at 5:00ish, unless I’ve scheduled a live meeting with students in the evening.
• Setting boundaries for worktime and not-worktime is important! It’s easy to get caught up in the “there is always more to do!” rat race otherwise—because the work is always there.
• Something I’ve been practicing deliberately more recently is taking 10 minutes an hour to get away from my computer. This is probably just because I’m in the over-40 crowd now, but I find my eyes get buggy when I stare at the screen for too long in one setting. Changing focal distance by going for a short walk, or getting a cup of coffee, or something like that really helps!
• I keep a daily to-do list so I can check things off. I have learned to (mostly) right-size the work so it’s manageable, and I usually know what I can actually get done in a given day. I use the Bullet Journal approach (though with my own twist on the “official” approach), so I can plan out a week at a time in manageable chunks this way. It’s also flexible enough for me to migrate things to other days as needed, and deal with things when they come up—as they inevitably do!

How often do you tell yourself to reach out to classes or individuals?

• I send at least one weekly email to the whole class with some words of encouragement and key reminders.
• I send out other whole class reminders on an as-needed basis, but my general rule is to not send more than one message a day. (Though I do break that rule occasionally if there is a need for more communication.) Key idea is this: if we want students to read everything we send, less is more.
• The flip-side of that last comment: in online learning scenarios, I am not sure you can over-communicate. Having a regular place where you post announcements that students can come back to as needed (rather than just sending more emails) seems like a good strategy for this.
• I do try to connect with individual students on a weekly basis, but it can feel a little overwhelming to try to connect with every student every week. I try to connect with some in online discussions, with some via email/Twitter/other communication channels we’re using, and everyone via feedback on assignments.
• I try to keep tabs on when students last logged in. If they have been out of touch for more than 3 days, I usually send a “How’s it going?” email to check in. But this is more of a principle than a rule—as I get to know students and their work habits online, I know that some students are likely to check in every day, and others might do most of their work in a few bursts throughout the week. It’s sort of like the way you get to know students habits in the face-to-face classroom, and you know which ones are more self-directed, and which ones you have to poke and prod to keep at it, you know?

What routines do you set for yourself?

• I mentioned a bit of this already, but having clear times for work, for rest, for refueling, for re-setting, etc. are very important. I strongly recommend this for anyone teaching online! You might have to experiment a bit to find a groove that works well, but routines are valuable for most online instructors.
• I tend to set weekly routines as well. Here are a few things that are part of my weekly routine:
• I typically use Friday afternoons for preparing for the coming week, making a plan for the things I know I’m going to have to do in the coming week. (I do this flexibly, if possible, but this is where I also put scheduled meetings in place so I can plan around them as much as possible.)
• As part of my weekly routines, I set aside some time for:
• Developing new content (like screencasts for how-tos, videos for presenting content, writing announcements I might send out later in the week, etc.)
• Keeping in touch with students (I literally put, “catch up on your email” on my to-do list for some days)
• Providing feedback on student work
• Intentionally blocking out time for these important activities is worth it!
• I have learned that I function best by closing my email for certain parts of the day. (I know, I know…this is almost heretical in some organizations.) But here’s the thing: every time a new message comes in, my attention gets pulled off task. Neuroscience suggests that multitasking is a myth—we can’t really focus on multiple things at the same time, but we can switch back and forth quickly. The problem is, switching back and forth has a productivity cost. So closing my email for big chunks of time helps me stay on track, and then I can dedicate a chunk of time to responding to emails in a batch.
• Related to this, I tend to use my email inbox as my workflow for many things. So if it’s something I can take care of in 2 minutes or less, I tend to respond right then, so I can get it off my to-do list. If it’s something that is going to take more time, I keep it in my inbox. If it’s just for information and doesn’t demand action, I file it into a folder as soon as possible—or delete it.
• I rarely am at inbox zero, but I try to keep my inbox to not more than 30 items, or 15 if possible. (As I’m writing this, I have just 8 emails in my inbox, which feel pretty great! But as I was typing that last sentence, one more came in—I jinxed myself.) 😊
• If I find I’m struggling with staying on task, I open up the Pomodoro app on my phone and start using it to break up my time. The pomodoro technique is a way of managing time by planning worktime and rest-time on a pre-determined schedule. This almost always helps me get back on track if I’m struggling with focus.

How do you know you’re doing “enough?”

• Oooooof…I feel really “seen” in this question! I struggle with doing “enough” all the time in my teaching practice, because I always can see the things that I’m not getting done, or that could be done better, or that I wish I had done differently. Sometimes it’s just enough to note it for next time around—and I do usually keep an unpublished page in each course I’m teaching just for these notes about what I want to do differently next time around.
• Soliciting student feedback on the course has helped me with this a lot. I don’t want to overwhelm students with surveys—survey fatigue is real!—but a few pointed questions can really help with this. A couple ideas about this:
• I have sometimes used an approach I learned from a colleague (thanks, Tim Van Soelen!): the two question survey. Two open-ended prompts:
• What should I keep doing that is helping you learn?
• What should I stop doing that is hindering your learning?
• I sometimes will ask a few questions in a survey that get at a particular thing I’m trying:
• On a scale of Awful to Amazing, how would you rate <the activity>?
• Follow up: why did you rate it that way?
• I sometimes ask a more robust set of questions that try to get at students’ experience in the course:
• What has been the best assignment we’ve had lately?
• What made it great?
• If I was going to assign a similar project, what would make it even better?
• How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? (or something else just for fun, you know?)
• Something I’ve just had to reconcile with: no matter how great I think the activity is that I’ve designed, it’s probably going to be 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. What I mean by that is this:
• 1/3 of the students will find it incredibly engaging, meaningful, and valuable
• 1/3 of the students will do the work, learn the concepts, and move on
• 1/3 of the students will find something annoying, difficult, or frustrating about it
• I try not to let this get to me…but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me! If I find things that seem to be working for most students most of the time, I try to keep doing things like that. (I know, that sounds squishy and probably is not helpful, but it’s true!)
• When I start feeling overwhelmed by doing “enough,” I roll back to my objectives/standards/essential questions/learning targets for the course. Keeping this sort of big-picture view helps! Are the things I’m asking students to do aligned to these objectives? Are students demonstrating evidence that they are growing in their abilities to meet the objectives? Am I providing them with feedback that will help them be better able to meet the objectives? If the answers to these questions are “yes,” I’m probably doing “enough.”

Finally, how do you not just watch Netflix all day?

• This is a KEY QUESTION! (Seriously!) When we start to feel overwhelmed, many of us start to find distractions.
• If find that music really helps me stay focused. The catch: it’s gotta be instrumental or I start singing along! Classical is good, but not all the time, for me at least. I like some “ambient rock” groups, like Explosions in the Sky, Balmorhea, Adam Young, Color Therapy, Lights & Motion, The Echelon Effect, and Clem Leek. Spotify has a curated playlist called “Deep Focus” that includes a lot of this sort of music, and they update it periodically, which is nice. I also have a playlist of ukulele music that is lovely background for grading students’ papers. 😊
• Building in downtime as a normal part of your schedule is important. I do try to read for half an hour a day, just for pleasure. I often watch something, but I try to limit this to just an hour or so each day. And getting regular exercise is an important part of this for me too—I often listen to a podcast while I’m pedaling my bike and walking my dog.
• And, honestly, there are times that I do blow off an hour and watch an episode of whatever show I’m streaming lately. That can be a helpful reset, especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed. The trick, of course, is to not get lost down the Netflix algorithmic rabbit hole. So this isn’t always a great strategy…l have to set some boundaries for myself so this doesn’t derail me for a whole day.

I think the key thing is to recognize that online teaching is still teaching, and teaching is hard work! It’s enjoyable, life-giving work, but it’s not easy. And so giving yourself permission to be playful in your teaching practice is also a healthy way to keep things interesting and enjoyable!