Our collection of some of the most popular guides from experienced online and distance learning educators.
The Online Teaching Survival Guide
Judith V. Boettcher and Rita-Marie Conrad
The Online Teaching Survival Guide is a highly rated guide is a comprehensive introduction to teaching classes online. The book covers core principles for structuring the online class, managing the overall running of the class, and interacting with students throughout the course. The material is grounded in evidence-based research and is intended for both new instructors transiting online as well as existing teachers who are looking to refine their approach.
Essentials of Online Course Design
Marjorie Vai and Kristen Sosulski
Essentials of Online Course Design focuses on core considerations when designing online courses, drawing on best practices to help ensure a well-structured course. The text covers core concepts of course design from the form and nature of the material delivered to the assessment and feedback from the course.
Small Teaching Online
Flower Darby and James M. Lang
Small Teaching Online considers the “small and strategic changes” that are can help transform online teaching and increase student engagement with the course content. The text covers approaches for increasing student engagement within online learning, with consideration of building a community, giving feedback, and the importance of making connections between course content and their experiences.
Teaching Effectively with Zoom
Dan Levy
Teaching Effectively with Zoom offers detailed, practical advice for teaching via Zoom, drawing on the authors experience as well as interviews with students. Published in July of 2020, the book is an up-to-date companion to assist educators transition to teaching on the platform.
The Distance Learning Playbook, Grades K-12
Fisher Douglas, Frey Nancy, and Hattie John
The Distance Learning Playbook offers practical advice specifically targeted at the needs of school teachers, combined with video companions to supplement the material in the book. Focused on the needs of a classroom environment, this highly rated guide covers a lot of considerations involved in delivering classes to K-12 students, with video material given advice from a diverse number of teachers and perspectives.
Affiliate Disclosure: In-line with many online publications, we may receive an affiliate commission for purchases made through links on this page.
Related articles
Setting up a Class in Zoom
If you are new to Zoom, there are a lot of settings that are useful of being aware of when setting up a meeting. This article explores those settings, with guidance on what may be useful for your class.
Preventing the Zoom Meeting Control Bar Auto Hiding
Although Zoom includes an easy to use options bar that appears at the bottom of the call, the standard behavior is for this bar to auto-hide. When presenting a Zoom class it is useful to have these options easily available so that they can be clicked as needed. This article illustrates how the change this default behavior.
See a Student View of Zoom
It can be useful to see Zoom as your students do – this makes it easier to know what they are likely seeing at there end and provide guidance and instructions. This article shows how Zooms looks from the student perspective.
Sharing a PowerPoint via Zoom
One of the most common ways of presenting on Zoom is to share a PowerPoint Presentation. In this article, we will explore how to set PowerPoint presentations to open as a separate Windows that can then be shared from within Zoom.
Using Zoom’s Waiting Room
The waiting room feature help ensures Zoomboming is a thing of the past. This article explains Zoom’s waiting room feature, and important things to know about the feature for managing your class.
Approaches to Managing Online Discussions
For classes that involve any degree of participation, it is important to consider how to manage online discussions. This article explores the options and considerations involved in student participation within online classes.
Display 49 Participants in Zoom Gallery View
One of the challenges with teaching medium to large classes on Zoom is viewing all students simultaneously. Although the default settings in Zoom limits the number of thumbnails displayed in the gallery view to 25, this can be increased to 49 (depending on your computer’s capabilities). This article explains how to enable this option, the computer specifications required to enable the feature.
Effective Use of Zoom Polls
A quick way of engaging with students on Zoom is through the use of polls. In this article, we will explain how to set up polls in Zoom and effective opportunities for integrating them into your class.
Personalizing Zoom
Although Zoom does not allow many opportunities for customization, there are several small adjustments to make Zoom slightly more personalized. This article will explain changing your profile picture, waiting room interface, and other personalization opportunities.