One of the most integral aspects of online teaching is communication. Communication between you and your students and the students and each other is the primary way in which the learning dynamic occurs. When you give an assignment, the student does the assignment and turns in the work, and you respond with a grade or evaluation. In an online course, communication is facilitated through email, message boards, and instant messaging programs. You can also exchange phone numbers with your students in case of emergencies. Discussion boards are extremely useful tools that engage all students with the material and foster critical thinking through discussion, analysis and participation. The article "Strategies for Engaging Students in Discussion" on the Penn State Learning Design Community Hub suggests that instructors facilitate discussion by having students (in groups or in pairs) lead weekly or daily discussions on the message board. By assigning a grade to this activity, students become responsible for not only understanding the material in the course but also presenting it to the rest of the class and guiding the discussion. Instructors can also use their input to redirect the discussion back to relevant topics, if necessary, and also encourage students to participate by sending emails to reluctant students.
When teaching an online course, the temptation to use a variety of media-heavy files and activities can be strong, but remember not all students will have equal access to the programs and software needed to use certain files. According to a study by E.S. Davis and D.A. Hantula, published in Computers in Human Behavior in 2001 and as cited in the "Best Practices for Online Learning" article, longer download times can be a help and a hindrance in distance learning. When downloading a particularly large file (such as a movie or lecture), students will eventually tire of waiting and either move on to another activity or stop studying entirely. However, students also have been shown to study the available material more closely when waiting for a file to download. Your best bet then, would be to make sure you make the material available in multiple formats. For example, if you're using a video clip in your course, see if you can also find a transcript of the video or an audio file of the material. This is a doubly effective strategy as it also addresses the variety of learning styles each student brings to the course.
No matter what course you teach, you'll need to carefully craft your activities and assignments to the needs of your online class. According to the "Best Practices for Teaching Online" article, you want to make sure that your assignments foster critical thinking and encourage discussion. In creating your course content, keep in mind that students have a variety of learning styles (a "learning styles quiz" is provided in the "resources" section at the end of this article) and the most effective course content is that which engages students with a variety of styles. However, you also want to craft your content in such a way that makes sense to you, so it's best to find some middle ground between the style of teaching with which you are comfortable and the best way to deliver that online content to your students.