3 Quick Tips for Increased Efficiency in Teaching Online

While brainstorming what I should write about for the blog today, I decided the topic of ‘easy efficiency would be a something valuable to discuss.

If you’re an online instructor, there are little inconveniences that creep in throughout the semester that become frustrating (sometimes without it occurring to us that we could actually fix these irksome issues easily if we tried).

Having said that, here are the 3 ways I cut out a few hours of work a week:

1. When students email you, have them respond to you on the email thread where your conversation has been taking place. Make it a regular practice and something that you mention to every student when an email conversation is started, so you’re not sifting back through old emails when they write to you again. This way you can remember what their situation is and what you may have said to them about it previously.
2. If a student has a concern that you think might become a common question in your email inbox that day, send a classwide announcement immediately. Then when the influx of emails come in, you can tell other students to ‘see your recent announcement’ instead of explaining things all over again.
3. At the beginning of the term, I send a classwide announcement stating that I will review any student’s written assignments in advance (to alleviate any problems that may arise as a result of a bad grade). This saves me a lot of guilt, and also makes my students surprisingly happy with whatever grade they end up receiving. Maybe this is just me, but I have quite a few students whose questions and worries about written papers that will be due during the course of the semester, and then email me after getting their grade back to complain that they weren’t clear on the directions. My solution is to to tell any concerned students before the paper is due that ‘if they send it to me as an attachment 72 hours before the deadline, I’ll review it and give them feedback so they can get the best grade possible.’ Keep in mind, only the dedicated students will take you up the offer, so you won’t be flooded with early papers to review; I typically only have 1 to 2 students approach me about this each semester.

The above tips may seem obvious to some, but they also might just be the ‘aha’ moment other instructors need to save some time and frustration from week to week.

Happy teaching!