There was a time when we teachers used to consider audio-visual tools as supplementary to mainstream lectures. The pandemic has however, drastically changed the education system. We are now fully dependent on technology to conduct online classes. Online learning system comes with its own set of challenges for students. Many of us would agree that there’s a decrease in motivation to attend online classes, lowered peer-to-peer interactions, delayed feedback, feelings of isolation, or lack of physical exercise and screen fatigue. What can we as teachers do to limit these challenges? How can we create a positive environment being distance apart? Basically, how to conduct an effective online class?

Here are few of the tips that will help you in conducting online lectures and also keep your students interested:

• Follow 30:30:30 method: Break up a 90-min class structure into 30-30-30 format. Assign 30 minutes of explaining core concepts, followed by 30 minutes of hands-on online activity and finally conclude with 30 minutes of linking the activity with concepts taught.

• Before class arrangements: Organise the study material that you are going to discuss in the class, before the lecture starts. You can arrange slides, in-class polls and quizzes and videos beforehand. This will ensure seamless and disruption-free classroom experience. Remember, the time you use in arranging these things during the class, is the time your students lose their attention.

• Use collaborative tools: Online interactive applications like Miro, Kahoot, etc. help your students play and learn.

• Rely on asynchronous learning (off-line): So, what if the class has gone online. You can still use the offline methods for teaching. Give an exercise based on pre-reading chapters, watching recorded lectures, case studies, playing simulations, excel-based exercises, etc. to expand students’ horizons.

• Prepare creative PowerPoint presentations: Use complementing colours, reference images, limited words bulletin pointers in your PowerPoint presentation. These things make students interested at the initial level.

• Use case studies: Case studies will help you explain a complex concept easily. Understand that students love listening to stories or an actual event that took place. And, if the case study is some how related to them then they will be hooked to your lecture, till the end.

• Curate home work as group assignments: This will help students frequently interact with their peers online, while achieving the goal of conceptual clarity.

• Use Learning Management Systems (LMS): These analytics software will help you track students’ performance.

Hope, you have a happy online teaching day! Because the satisfaction of conducting an effective session is incomparable. We know that 😊