As I reflect on my online teaching methodologies, I realize how different my teaching practice is now, compared to when I taught 6th grade. Part of that change is maturity - every year I better understood the value of preparation, reflection, formative assessment, and immediate feedback. Some of it is the shift from teaching K-12 students to providing professional development to teachers and administrators and teaching pre-service educators. I am much more careful now about ensuring that instruction matches objectives, and that I have a variety of resources to expand upon or re-teach specific skills and strategies.
As I've moved into the online environment, I've had to learn new skills and instructional methodologies. Although I know it's a best practice, I've done limited curriculum mapping for my courses, instead relying on a few key benchmark assignments and assessments, and building a free-flowing set of lessons around them. That strategy just isn't very effective in the online environment, as its much more difficult to diagnose and fill gaps if you throw in random topics! Much as I like flying by the seat of my pants in a face to face environment, it's like building the plane in mid-air when I do it online.
I've learned that I need to build the plane first. I even need to do a test flight with trusted colleagues to see where there are holes in the fuselage. I'm always fighting my own assumptions - just because I know where to find something doesn't make it obvious to anyone else. So redundancy is another methodology I'm working to improve. One thing I do know how to do is learn from my students; hopefully I'm getting ever closer to that first class luxury flight in the experience I provide them.
