How to Teach a Virtual Classroom

The advantages of technology have opened up the world of education to virtual classrooms. Professors can host an online course that gives flexibility to both the students and the professor. The teacher can choose to hold "live" lectures, which is known as synchronous class time. This means students and the professor interact using technology such as webcams to participate in lectures and discussions at the same time. Or the teacher may choose to teach using an asynchronous approach. This means the teacher will use a Web application such as Blackboard to post questions, threads and discussions for students to reply to in their own time.

Things You'll Need

  • Live media computer software
  • Webcam
  • Course management software tool
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Instructions

    • 1

      Present new information to students through lectures. You can choose to give a live lecture using software or programs that enable video chat along with a webcam, or you can choose to record a lecture and post it as a video on a course-management site.

    • 2

      Follow up your lectures with class discussions. Class discussions can be done in synchronous class time, using video-chat or text-chat formats. They can also be done asynchronously by posting discussion threads on your course site.

    • 3

      Upload videos, articles and other supplemental materials to your class site. This supplemental information can be viewed by students and used to reinforce taught material. You may choose to post discussion questions that students can answer as they read or view the materials.

    • 4

      Assign projects that can be done alone or in groups. Although your students do meet as a group for class, they may benefit from working on a project together. Allow them to post their projects on the class site to share with others.

    • 5

      Encourage students to upload their homework, projects and papers to share with other classmates. Many classroom-management sites allow for people to comment on other people's work, creating collaborative learning.

    • 6

      Assess your students through participation in discussions, papers and projects. Many class management sites such as Blackboard allow the professor to track the student's contributions to discussions, and to view what they have read or viewed from the site.

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