Book Review: The Online Teaching Survival Guide
by Yvonne Ho
The Online Teaching Survival Guide by Judith Boettcher and Rita Marie Conrad is a great book for learning how to teach online. This book teaches that there are four stages of any online class. You have the Beginning of the class, Early Middle, Late Middle and Wrap up.
Beginning of the Class
In the beginning of the class, you introduce yourself to the class. You make yourself relatable. You talk about common interests and hobbies. As the instructor, you want to become more than just a computer name on a computer screen. You have a Zoom Lecture where you and the students meet face to face and just get to know each other. The purpose of the introduction forum is to create a lasting bond between the teacher and the student, so the students trust you.
Early Beginning
During the first few weeks of the class, students are starting to get to know each other, and starting to trust the teacher, and learn the routine of the classroom, and of the grading and assignments. This is a hectic time for both teacher and student as both are getting used to each other. As the teacher, you have to make yourself personable, approachable by encouraging students to email you with questions. The teacher must create a welcoming atmosphere for the student to encourage them to reach out to you, the teacher. The assignments in the early part of the class is easy to get students used to the class. It is in the beginning of the class that the teacher does a lot of guiding for the students to orient the students on how to navigate the classroom, how assignments are graded, how assignments are done, and how feedback is given.
Early Middle
By the early middle of the class, the assignments start getting harder. You encourage students to reach out to you. You, the teacher send consistent weekly 'How are you' emails to the students. The teacher interacts extensively with students in the forums to reinforce core concepts. The teacher encourages at risk students by having extra Zoom sessions or phone calls. Students start to form learning groups and bonds to help each other over the hump. I always encourage my students to succeed. I find the early middle the make or break portion of the class. As the class progresses, the teacher relinquishes control of the classroom, and let the students learn by interacting with each other more and more.
Late Middle
Usually, by this time of the class, students have mastered the essay structure, and we are working on APA. I congratulate students on making it this far. I tell them there is not much further left to go. I give more graphics and wake up assignments to get the students to the finish line of finishing the class. I encourage students to work in groups, to help each other, and to continue to reach out to me. By this time, students know me, and love to email me, or phone me for help. In this latter half of the class, I prepare students for the next semester or for the next English class that they are going to take. By the late middle of the class, students take control of the classroom, and the main interaction in the forum are between students with the teacher acting as the Guide by The Side rather than the Sage on the Stage.
Wrap up
As the class wraps up, the teacher lets go of her authority. She lets the students do their work and sail along as by this time the classmates have bonded. Each student goes to each other for support. In the Peer Review forums of a writing class, students correct each other papers, comment on where a fellow student can improve her thesis or essay structure, and thus reinforce the core concepts of the writing class when they peer review each other's papers.
At the end of the class, the students reflect upon what they have learned. They talk about how they can apply what they learned in the class to their life. I let students know that the 5 paragraph essay structure and The Writing Process is something they can use in anything they write like a business email, business letter, a creative story, a poem or a permission slip for their child to be absent from school. I make students realize that they do not just take the writing class and then just forget everything they learned after the test. The trick is to make what students learn in class stick.
Boettcher goes over ten core learning principles in her book that every online teacher should use for successful online teaching of non-traditional adult students:
Ten Core Learning Principles
Principle 1: Every structured learning experience has four elements: with the learner at the center.
Principle 2: Learners bring their own personalized and customized knowledge, skills, and attitudes to the experience.
Principle 3: All learners do not need to learn all course content; all learners do need to learn the classes' core concepts.
Principle 4: Faculty mentors are the directors or facilitators of the student learning experience.
Principle 5: Every learning experience includes the environment or context in which the learner interacts.
Principle 6: Every learner has a zone of proximal development that defines the space that a learner is ready to develop into useful knowledge.
Principle 7: Concepts are not words but organized and interconnected knowledge clusters.
Principle 8: Different Instructor is required for different learning outcomes.
Principle 9: Everything else being equal, more time on task equals more learning.
Principle 10: We shape our tools, and our tools shape us.
(Boettcher, 26)
I would recommend this book to any online teacher either beginning teacher or advanced teacher or just any teacher wishing to brush up on her online teaching skills. This book also goes over the learning theories of the most recent learning theorists. This book goes over Core Principles and Best Practices of Online Teaching and learning, it teaches you how to gauge your students, how to give effective feedback, how to design an effective online classroom, what technology is needed to set up your online classroom effectively to support teaching and learning, how to prepare your syllabus. how to create and manage your course discussion posts to give students an engaging interactive forum experience, characteristics of good Discussion Questions, how to foster questioning for meaningful discussions, using discussion boards to gather evidence of learning, tips for good teacher feedback, dealing with difficult students, building Cognitive Presence Using the Practical Inquiry Model, Using Audio and Video resources and many other teaching tips! This is a must have book for every online teacher.
Boettcher, Judith. V. (2022) The Online Teaching Survival Guide 2nd Edition Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips. Wiley Publishing
