At the beginning of a new semester, higher education faculty consider the best approaches for promoting collaborative experiences in the online environment. Collaboration is critically important to the learning process and promoting these experiences online can help to reduce isolation, promote class community, and increase all forms of interaction. In fact, with just a few simple course design-related strategies, faculty can easily facilitate collaboration and ensure a more meaningful and robust experience for online learners.

When it comes to online learning, it’s important to provide students with engaging experiences to meet the needs of today’s diverse learners. Research has shown that engaging students in the learning process not only increases their attention but also cultivates critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Before you decide on your lecture approach, it’s essential to first examine your learning outcomes to identify which method will best achieve your goals in a meaningful way.

If you’re a faculty member who taught during the COVID-19 pandemic, chances are you spent hours learning new technology, conducting live online sessions with your students, and adapting your content to the digital environment. Although this rapid change brought many unforeseen and complex challenges, it also resulted in creative ideas and new approaches to ensuring academic continuity. Now that most of us are returning to the (new) status quo, there’s no better time to reflect on the unexpected opportunities and, dare-we-say, innovative digital solutions that emerged as a result of the pandemic.