This episode of Making the Jump comes from my work on the redesign of IU Bloomington’s Online ENG-W131 (First Year Composition course). It features a conversation about (and best practices for) Teaching Online as an introductory primer for new (or new to teaching online) instructors. The five educators (bios below) are from the Department of English at IU Bloomington, are members of the project team for this redesign, and have a range of teaching experiences. Here they share tips and suggestions, go-to practices, things the love about teaching online, and things they learned the hard way. (Video recorded in Zoom and edited in Adobe Premiere Rush.)

Topics & Time Markers

00:00 – Introductions & frame
01:28 – Conversation start
03:32 – Post-it notes & Fast-talkers
04:39 – Assigning Work vs. Effectively Leveraging Assignments
05:36 – Less is more (doing more with less)
07:53 – Accounting???
08:50 – Give yourself some grace (and be patient)
11:06 – Being accountants vs. being experience designers
12:08 – Give yourself permission to set limits
14:53 – Synchronous practices
15:19 – Group work & explicit Instructions
18:08 – Forming community via group work
20:16 – Integrating Asynchronous into Synchronous
22:06 – From cold calling to cool calling
23:13 – What do you love about teaching online?
26:23 – No instructional cheating online
27:37 – Missing class and alternatives
28:50 – Things possible online that aren’t in F2F
29:43 – Office hours (and Calendly)
30:33 – Online teaching improving F2F teaching
31:58 – Chat space & enabling students
33:33 – Audio-Visual Feedback on Assignments
37:44 – What if the class refuses to talk?
39:08 – Full class discussion (a few approaches)
40:43 – Hypothes.is and collaborative annotation
44:03 – What if things don’t go as planned?
41:48 – Build in feedback mechanisms
47:08 – Challenge of managing the technology
48:58 – Log in with multiple devices

Dr. Justin Hodgson is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Indiana University, founding editor of the Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (jumpplus.net), Adobe Digital Literacy Thought Leader, and Director/Project Lead for Online ENG-W131 at IU Bloomington. Follow him on twitter (@postdigitalJH) or at justinhodgson.com.

Laura Rosche is a graduate student (ABD) in the Rhetoric doctoral program in the Department of English at Indiana University. She has served as the Online ENG-W131 Liaison, the OW131 Assistant Project Lead, and has published work in Composition Studies.

Dr. Owen R. Horton is a Lecturer in the Department of English at Indiana University. Follow him at @alltrueist on Twitter, or check out his work at owenrhorton.com.

Dr. Alex Penn is a Visiting Lecturer and Liaison for Online ENG-W131 at Indiana University. She has also served as a project team member for OW131 and as an Assistant Director for the Writing Program.

Dr. Andrea Whitacre is a Visiting Lecturer at Indiana University in the Department of English, where they specialize in medieval literature and posthumanism. Their publications include work on medieval werewolves, queer embodiment, and Star Trek. Follow them on twitter @AEWhitacre.