Lessons Learned from Practices Used in Online Classes

Abstract At a large southwest state university, a majority of the undergraduate students come from economically underdeveloped areas. Those students may have limited access to the internet or electronic equipment from home. There may be some other difficulties for students to study at home, such as no quiet study space or responsibility to take care of other family members. Attending a 2-hour online lecture meeting without disruptions is almost impossible for some students. These issues impose a huge challenge for students to fulfill course requirements when all courses were moved online since March 2020. Besides these, students also face other unusual challenges in online courses in comparison with traditional face-to-face courses. For example, students may be less engaged or feel like they are learning by themselves. Previous studies have proposed several practices and theories that could help engage students in online courses, such as using low bandwidth methods, leveraging multimedia, setting course roadmap and rhythm, and using micro-lectures, and so on. This paper presents the changes that are made in an undergraduate-level course in the 2020 fall semester in the Aviation Program to ensure active online learning. One big change is to make the course asynchronous. This paper also introduces the practices that are used to motivate students and make them engaged. This paper talks about the effects and lessons learned each practice based on the instructor's observations and feedback from students, and the grades. This paper also discusses how the lessons learned from using the new practices in an online course could inspire the improvement of the traditional face-to-face course in the future.