4 Lessons From Moving a Face-to-Face Course Online

This fall, I’ve been asked to teach a Shakespeare class online. Here’s what Kevin Gannon wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education about moving an established course to cyberspace.

As I looked at the class — an upper-level U.S. history seminar — and began to think about how I would teach it online, my heart sank. How was I going to preserve what I thought was most essential — the regular student interaction, the freewheeling give-and-take as we discussed a particular source or topic — if none of us would be together in the same physical space at the same time? How could I take a course that seemed to depend on synchronous activity and make it work in a completely asynchronous environment? And even if I was able to figure out acceptable answers to those questions, where would I even begin? —4 Lessons From Moving a Face-to-Face Course Online