After you have developed your course content and related materials, and have the technology ready to use, you can focus your attention on learner support. This includes troubleshooting, building relationships, facilitating communication, participating in mediated events (if any), and providing feedback and assessment.

Work on interactivity

Increasing interactivity in a course when the students never meet face-to-face may seem like a daunting task. However, distance education provides many opportunities to foster an interactive "classroom." When people enroll in a distance learning course, they assume a high degree of individual responsibility for their learning. They know they will be working with prepared materials to learn the terms, concepts, and skills presented there. You can focus on working with them to master the content by using directed discussion to answer questions and stimulate critical reflection. You can also give the student high-quality feedback and assessment of his or her performance on assignments and examinations. You can incorporate interactivity into your course both through your content format and presentation, and through online discussion. Our guide on Encouraging student discussion may give you some ideas for promoting interactivity in distance learning.

For more information, you can read these helpful articles:

• Framework for Designing Questions for Online Learning
• Moderating Discussions in the Electronic Classroom
• Electronic Class Discussion: Tips from Instructors and Literature.

Encourage student collaboration

When students work together they learn from one another and extend their interaction and learning outside the class. Facilitating student collaboration when students never meet face to face can be challenging. When properly applied, however, educational technologies can encourage student collaboration even when the students never meet in person. Our Promote student collaboration guide provides suggestions for encouraging students to work together from a distance.

Manage your time effectively

It is easy to become overwhelmed by your course in a distance learning environment, because there are no set hours. One of the first challenges of teaching a distance learning course is determining how much time will be required of you to adequately support and assess your students. As with classroom instruction, it will take more time to teach your first class than it will subsequent ones. As you become more experienced, you may devote about the same amount of time to support your distance courses as your classroom ones, but you will be doing different kinds of tasks. However, some instructors claim that it takes them twice as much time to deliver a distance learning course because of the time it takes to respond to students.

These are the tips that experienced distance learners offer to manage the time you spend communicating with students: set limits; do not always be available to learners; establish clear priorities for dealing with messages; put time limits on discussion; and provide learners with answers to frequently asked questions. Don't make yourself the hub of conversation; encourage learners to respond to each other's questions and comments, and assign learners to lead mediated conversations. Encourage learners to find local tutors and mentors , and, if possible, hire a TA to respond to your students. Try to immediately acknowledge your receipt of an assignment or question, let your students know when you will respond to it, and ideally return a grade or comment within 2 days.

Respond to students

As with an on-campus course, responding to your students is important. Research shows that learners are more likely to complete a distance learning course if they receive prompt feedback on their work. Plan to evaluate and return your students' work within a week, ideally sooner. At the beginning of the course, give your students your schedule for responding to their work and the specific hours you are available personally by phone or chat. Try to personalize your responses to students and always try to provide some positive feedback. Distance learners may take longer to understand your expectations than on-campus students, so consider grading your first assignments with some leniency.