While I taught courses online well before the pandemic hit, I’ve certainly learned a lot more about remote teaching in the last year—as have many educators around the globe. I’ve taught as part of the Harvard Business Analytics Program (HBAP), a nine-month online certificate program, for the last two years. This online teaching experience earned me a seat on the Harvard Business School (HBS) Virtual Teaching Task Force, which formed earlier this year to help get our faculty quickly transitioned to digital learning.
To better understand how we should be approaching online teaching, I developed a framework I call REMOTE Teaching and Learning to synthesize key insights and learnings about the digital classroom. Whether you are new to teaching online or have taught online before, this framework provides helpful guidance and important considerations for teaching remotely.
Here, I break down what I mean by REMOTE: Reactions, Eye contact, Manageable, Organized, Thoughtful, and Engagement and evaluation. Educators new to online teaching may find this framework useful as they convert and adapt their classes to the online setting. Those with experience can use this framework as they continue to experiment with the digital teaching format—which is here to stay—to elevate their classes and provide even more value for students.