Online teaching requires delivering lessons online in a way that engages students and effectively delivers information. With a clear learning goal and proper tools for delivery, you can pull together the components of a successful lesson to deliver to students. 

According to the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at Michigan University, “A successful lesson plan addresses and integrates these three key components:

Online Teaching

  • Objectives for student learning
  • Teaching/learning activities
  • Strategies to check student understanding

Edulastic provides a clean and easy-to-use platform for online teaching. With an Edulastic teacher account, setting up and delivering comprehensive lessons digitally is simple and straightforward. We’ll walk you through the different components of setting up your online lesson. If you want a complete walkthrough of setting up your account, please check out our Edulastic 101 webinar, otherwise, read on as we guide you through creating lessons on Edulastic.

Before beginning, here are a few things to keep in mind about Edulastic:

  • Students can proceed “question-by-question” through a lesson assignment. You can include multiple questions in one “question page” Students can jump around in the lesson if they want to visit or revisit any parts of the lesson and there is a review page at the end where they can make sure they responded to all of the prompts throughout the lesson.
  • You have control over how long and how often a student can view a lesson. You can make it timed, you can leave it open for students to come and go, or you can close the assessment when you want time to be up. Once a student hits “submit” on their assessment, they cannot return to the assessment unless you redirect the assessment to them.
  • Adding multimedia: images, video, audio, embed codes for simulations or other code is very easy in Edualstic. In most cases, you can embed multimedia in both the questions and the response options.
  • Students can show their work with Edulastic’s scratchpad, open response question, drawing answer, or by uploading a photo in the Upload question type.
  • You can not only create your own lessons and questions in Edulasic, but you can also pull from and customize content that’s already been shared in the Edulastic Public Libraries and Item Banks.
  • Finally, it’s worth noting that Edulastic was first and foremost an assessment platform for formative and summative assessments. That being said, creating lessons is emerging as another great application of Edulastic’s platform.

Ease Into the Lesson

Before diving into a lesson, some teachers like to begin with a warmup. This could be a topic-related question or simply a way to check in on how students are feeling. Keep this simple and begin with an open response question that contains a warm-up or check-in to see how students are doing before leaning into the main lesson.

ELA Teacher Dr. Kara Pickens recommends beginning with something simple to get students’ attention. She suggests simply grading this part for completion.

Introducing new information

There are several ways to introduce a new topic. you’ll need to introduce them to a new topic. A strong introduction might include sharing learning objectives with students, getting them acquainted with new learning topics, and easing students into the core of the lesson. Here are a couple of ways to begin your lesson on Edulastic:

  1. To capture attention and reel students into the lesson, introduce new information with multimedia. Easily embed a video, image, or a guided simulation. Find and embed an informational video or record and embed an instructional video yourself. Already have the introduction from a worksheet that you want to distribute? Take a picture and add it to the lesson introduction. Or, give students images or add links to direct students to fresh content.
  2. Begin with a passage-based question and/or an open response question type. A passage-based question will provide a way to introduce the topic on one page with text, video, images, or all the above. This is a great way to provide different learning options for students who prefer watching a video over reading an article.
    Start with an open response question type to ask students for simple feedback before diving full-force into the lesson.

Getting a response to information

  • Seeing what concepts students are picking up and which they need help with. Use open response questions to collect general feedback from students and to ask them to reflect on the lesson content.
  • Use different question types to ask students about the information they are taking in. Instead of presenting the learning all upfront, consider sharing information little by little and checking for understanding with different question types as you go to make sure that students are following along.
  • Put worksheets directly into your Edulastic lesson or include them in a separate assignment that’s provided in addition to the lesson. With Edulastic, you’ll save time grading and will be able to see right away what students are understanding or still need help with. The immediate data will allow you to address any misconceptions right away.

Tracking progress

  • Keep track of students progress in the lesson with the live dashboard. The live dashboard shows what students have answered, what questions they have looked at and haven’t responded to, and how long a student spent on a certain portion of the lesson.

  • Set a time limit (Premium) on an assessment to control how long a student has to complete an assessment. If you only want to give them an hour or the same amount of time you’d normally have in class, you can set it for 60 minutes or however long your class period is. This is also a way to help prevent cheating and encourage students to move through the lesson in a timely manner.
  • For on-demand lessons or situations where you want the students to move through at a relaxed pace, you can set the assignment to close whenever you’d like. Students can exit and then return to continue to work through an assignment at any time until you close the assignment.
  • Add a learning standard to each question on your lesson to make sure you’ve covered everything you are looking to touch upon. You’ll also be able to later track how well students did on each learning standard.

Giving students feedback

  • Whether in-person teaching or online teaching, feedback is essential to learning. Students get instant feedback on any autograded questions when they submit the lesson or you can withhold the automatic grading to give yourself time to review the questions and then provide thoughtful written feedback to students. Preventing immediate release of scores is a good way to curb cheating as well.
  • Give students a second chance to revisit the lesson with redirect. Using redirect students can re-open the lesson and work through it once more. Depending on your redirect settings (Premium) they will see their prior answers, will be able to make adjustments, and will also see any written feedback you’ve provided.

Meet in Real Time

  • With Google Hangouts/Meet in Edulastic you can meet with students live to instruct, discuss lessons, answer questions, or debrief after an assignment. This form of online teaching is a great way to check in with students in real-time and simulate your in-class discussions.

When it comes to online teaching, Edulastic provides easy ways to introduce new content and shape a lesson however you’d like. With the immediate data provided by Edulastic as students work through the lessons, you can track student progress and see how students are doing. Check out pre-made lessons on Edulastic to get inspired and then log on to Edulastic to start adding your lessons today.

More online teaching tips and support for online lessons creation: