Effective Practices
Develop a strategy for online physics courses in your department
- If appropriate, work with the office that oversees online learning at your institution to understand the institutional needs that your online courses are expected to meet.
- Determine how your online courses can meet the needs of your students and provide possibilities for participation for students who, for example, commute, work, are studying abroad, are enrolled in an internship, and/or have health issues or other particular needs.
- Consult with other departments within your institution to identify needs that online physics courses could meet.
- Understand how your online courses can support communities outside of your institution, e.g., high school students, life-long learners, physics teachers, and/or others in the workforce who could benefit from additional coursework.
- If appropriate, use the exercise of planning online courses to consider future directions for your department that might not otherwise be possible.
- Survey students and, if possible, potential students, in your online and in-person physics courses to learn about their career interests and goals, how these courses fit into their interests and goals, their time commitments and schedules, and what other courses they have already completed or are taking concurrently.
- Learn about online physics courses that comparable institutions are offering, and how these serve populations similar to those that your institution could serve.
- Recognize that online courses (even among students on campus) may include a more diverse mix of students for whom in-person classes are not accessible. For instance, students who take physics courses online may be more likely to have significant work or family commitments, to be part-time students, to already have degrees in other fields, to be on active duty in the military, and/or to be . Learn how the population of students and potential students in your online courses is similar to and different from those in your in-person classes.
- Learn about the particular needs and constraints of different populations of students or individual students in your online courses. For example, immunocompromised students might not be able to attend a proctored in-person exam, students who work full-time might not have any availability during weekday hours, and active duty military students might not be able to provide advance notice for potential periods of unavailability.
- Survey your audience of current and potential online students periodically to refine your understanding of them.
- See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to use surveys and interviews to learn about your students and how to use student feedback forms for formative assessment.
- Clarify how the costs of online courses will be distributed between your department and institution and how they will be accounted for in your departmental budget. Advocate for the staff and financial support needed for these courses, especially before a course is offered for the first time.
- Recognize that, contrary to the common perception that online classes are a way to save or make money, effective online courses may take more time and effort to develop and implement than in-person courses and thus may be more expensive. For example, interactions between students and instructors are more likely to be one-on-one in an online course, and designing an online course may require more time than an in-person course.
- Identify the potential hidden costs of online courses, e.g., online proctoring fees and/or lab kit costs.
- Determine how adding online courses might impact existing in-person courses. For example, consider how course enrollments may be affected if an online section of a course is offered during the same term as an in-person section. Consider how assigning instructional staff to online courses rather than in-person courses may impact their morale, and how having more courses online may impact the camaraderie in your department.
- Determine the staff needed for each online class, e.g., initial course developer(s), , , and technical and administrative support staff. Recognize that you may need more instructional support staff for an online class than for an in-person class.
- Determine how to ensure the continued maintenance and sustainability of each online class. For example, if a class is being developed by staff outside of your department, obtain guarantees of maintenance and updates and/or ensure active co-development of the initial course materials with in your department; ensure all raw materials (source files, raw footage, etc.) from the initial development of each class are archived; and clarify how a course can be sustained if the instructional staff who initially developed the course leave your institution. See below for guidance on how to establish shared syllabi and course materials for future use.
- Determine the other resources your department will need and/or has available for each online class, e.g., technical and administrative support and software licenses, software development, and lab kits. Identify resources such as document cameras, microphones, video capture, , and editing software that are available to support the development of recordings.
- Work with institutional offices (e.g., the office that oversees online learning, your teaching and learning center, and/or your technology support office) to identify what resources your institution can provide and will expect you to use for online courses. For example, many institutions assign an “instructional designer” to support departments in designing online courses. Your institution may also provide particular technological platforms, technology support, classroom filming, course templates, and/or professional development for online education. Determine whether your administration will provide release time or other compensation for .
- Understand what revenue or other benefits your department will receive for each online course and how these benefits can be used.
- Consult with leaders of a similar program at another institution to learn about costs, benefits, and resources.
- As a department, discuss what you have learned from A, B, and C, and determine which courses are appropriate to offer online.
- Determine if in-person and online versions of the same course should be offered concurrently or out of sequence.
- Determine what length of course (e.g., full-term, half-term, or shorter intensive) is likely to work well for the students in each course, keeping in mind common constraints and commitments for students and , as well as what is possible within existing infrastructure.
- Consider offering online See the section on Undergraduate Research for guidance on how to consider implementing course-based research experiences (CUREs). See Evidence below for examples of online CUREs in physics and astronomy.
- Identify faculty members with sufficient instructional experience and longevity to oversee online course offerings and ensure their proper integration in the department’s curriculum and culture.
- Regard online course offerings as being valuable and important. Communicate their value through department communications; instructional assignments and support; and tenure, promotion, and merit decisions. Reinforce their relevance to your department’s mission by emphasizing the student groups that benefit from these opportunities and the impact on the variety of programmatic areas that the department can offer or participate in.
- Identify and address inequities in outcomes (e.g., student persistence, , grades earned) for different groups of learners taking online courses. See Evidence below.
- Review or create for each online course. Ensure that these outcomes are aligned with institutional guidelines, and when appropriate, are aligned with outcomes for the equivalent on-campus course and/or with your . See the sections on Introductory Courses for STEM Majors, Introductory Courses for Life Sciences Majors, Upper-Level Physics Curriculum, Courses for Non-STEM Majors, and Supporting Research-Based Teaching in Your Department for further guidance on developing course-level student learning outcomes.
- Ensure online courses adhere to institutional policies and legal requirements regarding the use of third party copyrighted material and intellectual property; regulations for handling of student data; expectations from accreditors (e.g., verification of student identity, sufficient and sustained engagement between students and ); and the and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, in particular section 504, which mandates equitable access for in institutions that receive federal funding, and section 508, which sets standards for digital accessibility. See 2.G below for more details on accessibility.
Design courses to serve students and instructional staff
- Create flexible active learning experiences that include many opportunities for student interaction. See the section on Implementing Research-Based Instructional Teaching in your Classroom for details.
- Engage students in group activities both during synchronous class sessions and with assignments that students complete in groups outside of class. Support group activities with technologies particular to online environments such as breakout rooms, online whiteboards, and other interactive technologies including simulations, online homework systems, and messaging and collaboration platforms.
- Regularly collect student ideas and questions so you can gauge their understanding, provide timely feedback, and adjust the class to better meet their needs. Use online whiteboards, polls, frequent short quizzes, and the chat feature of videoconferencing platforms.
- Use synchronous online time mostly for interactions among students or between students and and/or , rather than for conveying information that students could get just as easily by watching a video or reading at a time that is convenient for them.
- Divide instruction and course content into short chunks of 15 minutes or less. For example, break lectures up into short videos interspersed with activities; keep small-group discussions focused on a short problem; and replace readings with short interactive assignments that include embedded pop-up questions, formative assessments, simulations, or guided discussions. Breaking up content into smaller pieces can make it easier for students to focus and learn, especially in online environments. Consider implementing one of these changes each time a course is taught, to build up a collection of modular materials over time.
- See below for guidance on how to use instructional support staff to provide additional support for students and create structures to encourage students to support each other.
- Use some online course materials in an in-person course setting to observe student behavior and to gain an understanding of how students use these materials and how to address any challenges they experience.
- Organize information within your to facilitate student learning. For example, provide a summary page or course calendar with links to all assignments, software tools, study resources, and technical support resources. Organize course modules in a logical progression in which the order of activities is clear to students.
- Ensure that all course information is organized in your so that students can easily find course materials, links to join synchronous meetings and asynchronous discussion platforms, assignments, due dates and deadlines, procedures for submitting assignments and taking exams, grading policies, other policies, study resources, software tools, and procedures for submitting accommodation requests.
- Ensure all activities (e.g., readings, homework, labs, quizzes, discussions, exams) are set up as assignments in your in order to emphasize that each course element has value and is part of a logical progression. If your course is not self-paced, ensure that due dates are clear for all assignments.
- Preview the course materials in the student view of the , while imagining the perspective of a student who has never taken this course, to ensure that the organization of materials will make sense to that student. If possible, have someone else who is not familiar with your course preview the materials from this perspective and give feedback on their experience.
- Structure assignments with sufficiently regular due dates to encourage students to stay on track, and with sufficient flexibility to accommodate a variety of ways for students to engage with the course. Consider using a greater number of shorter assignments to assist students in managing their time, while ensuring students have sufficient time to complete assignments before the due dates. Recognize that students may not be able to engage with the course daily and/or may need to break up the time they dedicate to the course into small chunks.
- Limit the number and variety of specialized learning software tools used in each course, and make sure that all tools are organized and findable from one central location, such as the course . Ensure that students are not overwhelmed by the need to keep track of the large number of different tools that are likely to be used in their online course.
- Orient students to the course structure, requirements, and technologies at the beginning of the course. Use assignments to engage students with the learning tools that will be used in the course. For example, assign students to do scavenger hunts for content, login and register software, submit a practice assignment, post to a discussion thread, and watch short training videos on how to use common course elements.
- Provide explicit instructions for all course technology and administrative procedures, e.g., logging into and navigating the , logging into and using messaging and collaboration platforms, accessing class recordings, accessing grades, using shared whiteboards, submitting assignments, uploading files, using discussion boards, using exam proctoring procedures or platforms, and accessing technical support and assistance. Where appropriate, link to instructions and walkthroughs provided by your LMS.
- Ensure that a printable syllabus is posted on the course and that it follows your institutional guidelines (including any special guidelines for online courses). Include clear statements of the and aspects of the teaching philosophy of the course that pertain to its online nature, e.g., details about synchronous vs. asynchronous engagement.
- Articulate clear expectations for student attendance and engagement with both synchronous and asynchronous course elements.
- Ensure students have access to timely technical support and assistance during online exams and evaluations. If possible, collaborate with the office that oversees online learning at your institution to use and promote the support resources they already have available.
- Use breakout rooms in synchronous meetings to quickly assign students to small groups for interactive discussions. Assign video lectures for students to watch on their own so you can use more of the available synchronous time for interactions among students or between students and and .
- Design experiences that take advantage of students already being on a computer and therefore being able to quickly switch between activities such as exploring a simulation, looking up information, and joining a breakout room to discuss what they just did with other students.
- Encourage students to use the chat feature in synchronous meetings to ask questions at any time without interrupting. Assign to monitor the chat and respond to questions without interrupting and/or to alert instructional staff about issues that need to be addressed immediately.
- Take advantage of students’ comments and questions being recorded in chats and discussion boards; collect and read these comments and questions to understand what students are thinking and where they need additional support.
- Use technology to replicate some of the affordances of in-person study and meeting spaces for office hours or free help sessions. For example, use a waiting room for confidential meetings and use breakout rooms for students to engage in group work on a common problem without distracting students working on other problems.
- Determine an appropriate balance of synchronous and asynchronous components in each course, providing options for students to participate in either way when feasible. Recognize that synchronous activities provide more opportunities for active learning, for the discipline of regular scheduled interactions, and for students to feel like they are part of a community, while asynchronous activities provide flexibility and inclusivity for students with a wide variety of learning needs and scheduling constraints. Provide deadlines for asynchronous activities to support students in staying on track.
- Determine whether each course will be fully online or will have a combination of online and in-person components. Various combinations of online and in-person components may be known as blended, hybrid, or hyflex. For courses that include both online and in-person components, when possible, allow flexibility for students to choose to participate fully online in order to accommodate and students with other life circumstances that make it difficult to participate in person.
- Determine how you will restructure laboratories for online courses that require them. Weigh the cost and benefits of different options for replacing standard hands-on experiences: using simulations (e.g., PhET), using videos of experiments (e.g., ISLE video experiments), having students use smartphones to collect data (e.g., with phyphox or the Physics Toolbox), sending students lab kits or equipment to use at home (e.g., iOLabs or the Analog Discovery device), using everyday objects to perform experiments, and/or having in-person sessions with equipment. Consider accessibility for disabled students and requirements for other programs that your courses serve, such as engineering or the life sciences. See the section on Instructional Laboratories and Experimental Skills for general guidance on designing good labs. See Resources below for tools that can be used in online labs. See Evidence below for references comparing the educational effectiveness of hands-on and virtual laboratory activities.
- Identify technological tools that could help meet the of online physics courses.
- Recognize that, depending on your context, the selection of technological tools for online courses may be determined by the institution, the department, or . Determine when you have the authority to select tools, when you need to request permission to use alternative tools or advocate for changes in institutional selections that are not serving your students and/or instructional staff, and when you need to use required tools to the best of your ability.
- When selecting technological tools, think about the needs of students and and how they will use the tools, determine which tools will most effectively meet their needs, and involve them in the evaluation and selection of tools. Select tools that are easy to learn, access, and use by students and instructional staff, recognizing that not everyone has access to reliable, broadband internet or the resources to acquire high-end devices.
- Recognize and address disparities in access to reliable internet, technology, and high-end devices. Find ways to ensure that students can fully participate without needing access to expensive tools and/or provide support for students to acquire the needed tools. Identify and share with students low-cost alternative tools, as well as programs through your institution and/or city that provide funding for students to acquire tools that enable participation in online classes, e.g., hotspots, computers, tablets, software, and laboratory equipment. Always provide dial-in information for students to join synchronous meetings on their phones to accommodate times when they may not have access to high-speed internet.
- Select technological tools that enable interaction among and students, rather than tools designed to replace this interaction. For instance, discussion boards, instant messaging apps, and social media platforms can reduce communication barriers, build a welcome and inclusive community, and engender a sense of belonging for students.
- For courses that require it, consider the spaces and technologies needed to accommodate in-person and online modalities simultaneously. For example, ensure that there are mechanisms for online students to interact with and with each other and that cameras and microphones are set up so that online students can see and hear the instructional staff, students, and any materials being presented. If possible, assign to answer technical questions from online students, manage breakout rooms, and review student questions to answer and/or pass them on to instructional staff.
- Balance the number of specialized learning tools (e.g., online homework systems, peer review software, textbooks, communication platforms, and notetaking software) that you use to facilitate elements of the course against their cost, learning curve, and frequency of use. For example, it may be worth the time to use a tool that is difficult to learn if it will be used frequently throughout a long course and/or in future courses, but not if it will only be used a few times or in a shorter course.
- Recognize the importance in physics and in learning physics of being able to collaboratively work out problems through diagrams and equations on whiteboards, and find accessible alternatives to enable students to do this online. For example, providing access to low-cost stylus input devices or tablets can make it easier for students to draw graphs and write equations on online whiteboards or other online messaging and collaboration platforms.
- Collaborate with offices on campus (e.g., financial aid, international education) to ensure that your online course structure takes into account requirements for and restrictions on students in online physics courses. Set up a structure that enables students to get what they need from online courses and support students in navigating this structure. Consider how courses are paid for, supplemental costs, testing requirements and proctoring services, technology needs, degree requirements, restrictions on scholarships or other financial aid, and residency requirements.
- Collaborate with your disability services office and/or the office that oversees online learning to ensure that each online course is accessible in accordance with your institution’s policies and guidelines, e.g., size of figure captions, closed-captioning of videos, readable fonts and figures, compatibility with assistive technologies. Use tools available for assessing accessibility that are provided by your . Learn about ; see the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for details, resources, and references on how to support disabled people.
- Recognize that not all students will have access to high-bandwidth internet connections and quiet work spaces or be the only person in their home engaged in online learning or working. Consider, e.g., not requiring students to keep their camera and/or microphone on, recording synchronous class sessions and office hours, providing alternatives to use of high-bandwidth resources such as high-resolution video, establishing a grading scheme that allows for missing and/or late assignments, being flexible with assignment deadlines, and establishing a loan program for equipment such as computer headsets and stylus input devices.
- If possible, ensure that information about required hardware, software, course texts, specialized resources (e.g., laboratory kits), and other course costs (e.g., exam proctoring fees) are clearly communicated to potential students prior to course registration.
- Encourage students to turn on their video during synchronous meetings. Teach them how to use backgrounds to provide more privacy, and how to turn off self-view to reduce ‘zoom fatigue.’ Do not require students to have their video on at all times, acknowledging the many reasons why they might not feel comfortable doing so. Forcing camera use can increase zoom fatigue and can have disproportionate negative impacts on women, who are more likely to be held to higher standards around their physical appearance and to have children in the background, as well as on those with lower socioeconomic status, who are more likely to have poor internet connectivity and to be in environments that they may not want others to see.
- Consider using the rich data sets afforded by online courses to assess student engagement and attainment of . See Programmatic Assessments below for examples.
- Consider using existing quality assurance rubrics for online courses as a complement to institutional evaluation procedures (see Quality Matters in Resources, below) to assess features distinctive to online courses. Train to use a rubric when observing online courses.
- Incorporate the assessment of student learning in online courses into your department’s annual assessment processes. See the section on How to Assess Student Learning at the Program Level.
- See the section on Supporting Research-Based Teaching in Your Department for detailed guidance on how to use a cyclic process to design, assess, and improve courses based on student learning outcomes including how to create learning outcomes, design courses based on learning outcomes, conduct regular course assessments, and improve courses based on assessment results.
Create a community of support for students
- Strive to provide a vibrant, inclusive community for online learners where everyone feels supported and has something to contribute. Recognize that such a community can help improve student engagement; improve persistence and retention; and provide a more welcoming environment for first-generation college students, commuter students, students working full time, students raising children, and/or students from other .
- Provide a means for students to ask questions during synchronous online class sessions, through, e.g., chat features, shared documents, or personal response systems. Assign and/or to address these questions in real time.
- Offer and broadly advertise adequate office hours. Explain to students the function and value of office hours and discuss them in class. Consider renaming office hours and tutoring as “free help sessions” or “student hours” to make them more inviting and their purpose clearer.
- Offer and broadly advertise opportunities for students to set up one-on-one meetings with and/or .
- Provide an asynchronous platform for students to ask questions and have discussions with each other and with instructional team members. Use a platform that includes features such as threads or channels for different kinds of questions or discussions or for group projects, spontaneous real-time audio/video conferencing, and integrated collaborative whiteboards. This platform may be a message board service through the course , or if the LMS is too limited, a commercial system such as Slack, Discord, or Teams. Ensure that your usage of any platform is accessible and consistent with .
- Encourage students to use the asynchronous platform for any questions that other students might also have about the physics and/or class functionality, to leverage the community and enable everyone to help provide and obtain answers, so that the burden does not fall only on . Encourage students to use email only for individual administrative questions such as questions about accommodations and grades, for which it is necessary to maintain a clear record and privacy.
- Orient students to all the different ways to communicate and collaborate in the course, ensuring that students know the function of each platform and when and how to use each.
- Ensure that asynchronous student communications are moderated by or who set expectations for productive behavior and check the forum regularly (e.g., once a day) to address negative messages, delete inappropriate remarks, address technical issues, and remove spam. See D below for details.
- Ensure and are responsive while establishing clear boundaries. State when each instructional team member is available, including schedule changes and planned absences, and the best modes to connect. When possible, provide an alternate contact when someone needs to miss their available time. Consider a contract that both instructional team members and students agree to. For example, a contract might state that instructional staff will respond to any question within 24 hours between Monday and Friday, and students are expected to check their class messages at least once every 48 hours.
- Recognize that connecting with students in online courses will be more difficult and less automatic, and therefore will require more conscious effort and different techniques.
- Work to establish a rapport with students, recognizing that doing so will be more difficult and time-consuming through text and video than through face-to-face interactions. Make a special effort to ensure that the tone of all communication is welcoming and nonjudgmental, especially if you are likely to be perceived by students as having a high degree of authority. Students may already be afraid of their instructors and thus may be likely to misinterpret communications as more negative than intended.
- Recognize that students are more likely to feel lost and disconnected in an online class. Make a special effort to monitor student participation (for instance by using tools provided by your ), and reach out to students who are not engaging in the course to find out why and/or what support they need. Err on the side of too much communication rather than too little.
- Consider providing opportunities for students to get to know you by sharing appropriate information about yourself, e.g., your experience as a student, career path, interest in the discipline, and interests outside of physics.
- Learn about students’ majors, interests, career plans, mathematical preparation, previous exposure to course topics, and the challenges they may be experiencing in the course by, e.g., using intermittent anonymous surveys. Respond appropriately to challenges by, e.g., extending assignment deadlines, providing additional support resources, adjusting the length of assignments, or creating more flexible opportunities for engaging with the course. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to use student feedback forms for formative assessment.
- If feasible, learn about and connect with individual students. Learn as many students’ names as you can.
- Have read and respond to students’ questions and comments in synchronous class chats and asynchronous discussion forums. This helps ensure that students receive timely responses while enabling to focus on running the class as a whole. Instructional support staff can also alert instructional staff to common themes in student questions or observations about student understanding that need to be addressed.
- Have monitor and facilitate student discussions in synchronous breakout rooms and asynchronous forums.
- Have lead free help sessions or online study rooms so that there are more times available for students to obtain help.
- Consider how you can effectively engage different types of , such as undergraduate instructional assistants and graduate teaching assistants, to take advantage of each group’s unique strengths. For example, as near peers, undergraduate instructional assistants are generally more relatable to other undergraduate students, and are typically better able to understand their institutional context and help students feel comfortable asking questions that they might be hesitant to ask their instructor or even a graduate student. If undergraduate instructional assistants are part of a with a strong pedagogy component, they might know more than graduate students about research-based teaching practices. For more details, see the section on Undergraduate Instructional Assistants. Graduate students, in contrast, typically know more about physics subject matter, as well as how the content of a particular course fits into the broader context of the physics discipline.
- Establish opportunities for students to work in small groups, both in breakout rooms during synchronous meetings and in asynchronous assignments. Consider assigning students to consistent study groups that meet regularly so that they have a chance to develop close connections with a few other students. See the section on Implementing Research-Based Teaching in Your Classroom for guidance on how to facilitate students working together effectively in small groups.
- Consider using structured student discussions with discussion prompts and feedback provided either by students to one another or by instructional team members.
- Encourage students to answer each others’ questions in synchronous chats and asynchronous discussion platforms.
- Set clear expectations for appropriate behavior and conduct in both synchronous and asynchronous discussions, using guidelines such as the STEP-UP Guidelines for Conduct During Remote Discussions.
- Manage discussion platforms to ensure that students engage with the assignments and that discussions are inclusive and welcoming for all students, especially new students, non-traditional students, and students from ; and to ensure that no one subgroup dominates their use. Encourage students to use official class discussion platforms rather than establishing their own communication structures, recognizing that problems such as harassment, bullying, and exclusion of students from marginalized groups are more likely to arise in unmonitored environments. Recognize that it is often easier to make hurtful comments in online environments than in face-to-face conversations, so more management of student communication may be needed in online classes.
- Set an explicit expectation of academic integrity by, e.g., having and regularly discussing an honor code and incorporating academic honesty statements into assignments and exams. Avoid assuming that students will cheat or treating them as cheaters. Recognize that most students who cheat do so opportunistically, meaning they do not set out to cheat, but find an opportunity to do so that is easy. Small policies and practices can go a long way to prevent the majority of students from cheating.
- Consider using mid-term feedback forms to determine students’ perception of the prevalence of cheating and address any perceptions of widespread cheating using the recommendations below. Balance creating a sense that you trust your students with reassuring students that the course is fair, recognizing that students may be demoralized about their own work if they think many other students are cheating. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to use student feedback forms for formative assessment.
- Establish clear policies for collaboration and using outside resources so that students understand what is considered cheating and what is not.
- Because it is more difficult to prevent students from using outside resources in an online course, consider using assessment methods that explicitly recognize collaboration and the use of resources as positive learning opportunities, e.g., collaborative and/or open-book exams.
- Consider using more complex and open-ended questions where it is more difficult to look up the answer online. Rather than trying to prevent students from using AI tools, consider creating assignments that make use of them by, for example, asking students to analyze an answer written by an AI tool.
- Consider removing all high-stakes assessments. It is much harder to systemically cheat on many smaller quizzes or exams than on one big one, and students are less likely to cheat if the reward for doing so does not outweigh the risk.
- Consider offering exams in-person on campus or at another location, doing online oral exams via videoconference, or using other ways to evaluate student learning. Discuss potential assessment mechanisms with relevant campus offices, especially those related to online learning.
- If your courses use online proctoring services and/or other technological tools that control how students use their computers during exams, consider and mitigate the potential negative impacts of these (e.g., loss of privacy, security issues, increased anxiety, need for high-bandwidth internet connectivity, and high financial cost).
- Consider using data that are already easily available from your and/or other systems you use for administering homework and exams to identify obvious instances of cheating, e.g., students who spend very little time on each question and get them all right.
Support effective instruction in online courses
- Recognize and support the additional effort required of when moving courses online or teaching an online version of a course for the first time, even if they have already taught an in-person version of the course.
- Provide incentives to i to recognize their effort in designing and teaching high-quality online courses. For example, explicitly recognize curriculum development in departmental tenure, promotion, and merit processes; and advocate for compensation or teaching release for course design and development.
- Consider hiring students who have taken an in-person version of a course and/or who have served as for that course to help design activities.
- Identify and provide professional development opportunities for to support their initial transition to and ongoing improvement of online courses. Coordinate with your teaching and learning center and/or the office that oversees online education at your institution. Collaborate with these offices to ensure the professional development they offer meets the specific needs of physics courses for, e.g., active learning, laboratories, and/or demonstrations.
- Assign online courses to who are fully integrated members of the department, rather than only to temporary and/or part-time instructional staff. Provide equal opportunities for professional development and recognition to instructional staff teaching online and in-person classes.
- If your department offers multiple online courses, establish mechanisms for teaching these courses to support each other. For example, establish a mentoring program where instructional staff with experience teaching online train new instructional staff and share course materials, and/or set up or encourage participation in a reading group focused on online learning.
- Provide support to encourage to attend and present at workshops and conferences on online learning.
- Include online courses in promotion, tenure, and merit evaluations alongside in-person courses.
- Include online courses in all departmental and institutional processes for evaluating teaching (e.g., peer observations, teaching reflections, and student evaluations of teaching) used for in-person courses, coordinating with other campus offices as needed (e.g., the office that oversees online learning).
- Review departmental and institutional processes for evaluating teaching and discuss as a department the extent to which these processes are appropriate and applicable to online instruction and how they can provide useful feedback to . Consider supplementing institutionally required instruments with additional questions specific to online instruction.
- Recognize and account for the potential for differences between evaluations of online vs. in-person instruction due to online courses having, e.g., different student populations, lower response rates, and less familiarity and/or connection with .
- See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to assess teaching effectiveness, using multiple methods and recognizing the limitations of each method.
- Establish a department repository of vetted materials (e.g., syllabi, notes, clicker questions, interactive lecture demonstrations, activities, assignments, rubrics, and exam questions) to support the sharing and continued use of materials that work well in your department, minimize preparation time, and promote long-term sustainability. Ensure there is a person or group responsible for curating and maintaining this resource.
- Encourage continuous refinement and improvement of shared course materials as new bring fresh perspectives.
- Promote the use of freely available course materials (e.g., open source education resources) to minimize costs for students. See Resources below.
- Recognize that course materials that work well for one member may not work well for others. Ensure that individual instructors have the autonomy to be creative and use materials that allow them to express their expertise and identities, to the extent possible, while still maintaining course consistency, meeting , and using practices consistent with research in physics education.
- Encourage, incentivize, and reward faculty and staff who maintain and organize resource repositories. Recognize that someone will need to dedicate a significant amount of time and effort to ensure that these repositories are functional and beneficial, and that dedicating faculty and/or staff time to this work will pay off by reducing redundant development and improving instructional quality and alignment.
