Optimising Learning in the Virtual Classroom

Teaching online is not teaching in a room with the camera switched on. Attention goes somewhere else, silence means nothing, and the tools that would rescue you in person are not available.

Three hours online, building sessions where people actually take part rather than sit and watch.

• Design a virtual session around interaction from the start, rather than adapting a face to face plan and hoping.
• Use breakout rooms, polls, whiteboards and chat deliberately, so each one does a job rather than filling time.
• Read a virtual room without the usual visual cues, and know how to recover a session that has gone quiet.
• Run video cases and screen sharing smoothly, so the technology stays invisible and the learning stays visible.
• Judge honestly when a topic needs the room, and when virtual delivery serves your learners better.