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Essential and Best Practices for Online Teaching

Essential and Best Practices for Online Teaching

These two sets of practices are extensions of Miami University's Statement of Essential Teaching Practices.

Statement of Essential Online Teaching Practices

Every instructor of a distance learning course, whether online asynchronous (ONLA) or online synchronous (ONLS) is responsible for:

  1. Adhering to the same elements as the Statement of Essential Teaching Practices for all courses; plus
  2. Providing students with instructions for getting started in the course; using a clear navigational structure within a Miami-supported learning management system;
  3. Fostering effective and respectful technology use, including through syllabus policies and assignment language that clearly state whether/how students may use AI, along with a rationale for these policies (in keeping with Academic Affairs’ Faculty Guidance on AI); 
  4. Providing students with instructions for communicating with the instructor;
  5. Ensuring that all materials assigned are copyright compliant and accessible to students with specific accommodations received from Student Disability Services;
  6. Participating actively in the course, interacting with students in a way that is regular, scheduled, and predictable; and,
  7. Upholding a standard of rigor equivalent to a face-to-face version of the same course.

Statement of Best Practices for Online Teaching

Miami University’s best online courses mirror the same high standards of faculty expertise and engagement in Miami’s face-to-face courses. For decades Miami faculty have been renowned for providing innovative, transformative learning experiences in the traditional classroom. Miami faculty can extend these award-winning pedagogical approaches to the online space by:

  1. Providing engaging, up-to-date, and original instructional content in a variety of formats;
  2. Fostering a community of inquiry by facilitating regular, scheduled, and predictable interaction:
    1. between students and course content,
    2. between students and instructor, and
    3. among students in the course;
  3. Using authentic assessments – ones that allow students to apply knowledge and skills in meaningful, real-world contexts – to demonstrate mastery of learning objectives;
  4. Offering a variety of assessment opportunities, from formative and low-stakes self-evaluation to summative measurement of mastery;
  5. Regularly providing students with timely and substantive feedback on their work; and
  6. Taking advantage of the unique affordances of the modality (whether hybrid, online synchronous, or asynchronous) and LMS to create learning experiences that would not be possible in a face-to-face classroom.

 

Footnotes:

  1.  Aligned with industry standard best practices set forth in the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric (QM) and SUNY Online Course Quality Review Rubric (OSCQR)

  2. Aligned with QM and OSCQR best practice

  3. Aligned with copyright law and ADA, respectively. Miami University Libraries provide more information about copyright. UPCEA provides a summary of ADA considerations for online courses. 

  4. Aligned with US Department of Education requirements for regular and substantive interaction (RSI) in distance learning: read more about RSI in the Federal Register.

  5.  Aligned with Higher Learning Commission accreditation Criterion 3, which stresses the importance of equivalent rigor and quality across program modalities. Read the complete description of Criterion 3 on the HLC website.

  6.  All of the best practices above are aligned with industry standards for online pedagogy set forth in the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric (QM) and SUNY Online Course Quality Review Rubric (OSCQR). Item #5 on regularly providing substantive feedback also aligns with US Department of Education requirements for regular and substantive interaction (RSI) in distance learning: read more about RSI in the Federal Register.