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Teaching Online — a crash course for new academics

Your first weeks of teaching online, distilled into four short lessons and a self-check. Curated from TEQSA's Higher Education Good Practice Hub so you can start strong — and connected.

The one thing to remember: the most common complaint in online teaching is too little interaction — students miss the informal contact of campus. Everything below comes back to one idea: design for connection from day one.
4 lessons~12 min read1 self-checkSource: TEQSA Good Practice Hub

The lessons

1
Preparation & managementSet up presence, structure and expectations
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Online teaching's biggest risk is disconnection. Students can't catch you before or after class, so you have to make interaction deliberate and visible.

  • Establish your presence early — a warm welcome, a clear teaching plan, and how/when you're contactable.
  • Make the space predictable — students should always know where things live and what's next.
  • Tell students up front how you'll interact with them, so the expectation is set before week one.
TEQSA resources
  • National guidelines for improving student outcomes in online learning
  • ASQA guidance on distance delivery; curated resources for educators
2
Teaching approachesThe practical playbook for engagement
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Distilled from RMIT Online's tips for teaching online (Dr Dawn Gilmore). The throughline: be present, be human, and reach out.

  • Open by telling students how you'll interact — and what to expect from their first webinar.
  • Establish your discussion-board presence: reply, prompt, model good contributions.
  • Facilitate engaging webinars (not lectures) — and email students who aren't logging into the LMS, early.
  • Build feedback loops into your teaching, and challenge your assumptions about who is and isn't participating.
  • Lean on good open resources (yes, Google and YouTube), and don't forget to have a bit of fun.
  • Celebrate achievements, point students beyond the classroom, say goodbye at semester's end — and reflect on your own approach.
TEQSA resources
  • "Going online: R(e)imagining teaching and learning" — TEQSA & RMIT webinar series
  • "The 10 fundamentals of teaching online for faculty and instructors"
3
Effective online feedbackWhere online students most feel seen
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Feedback is the moment online students feel the teacher is real. Make it timely, specific, and dialogic — invite a reply rather than closing the loop.

  • Use the digital tools — short audio or video comments, annotated rubrics — to make feedback feel personal at scale.
  • Feed-forward: tell students what to do next, not just what went wrong.
TEQSA resources
  • "Effective feedback in digital learning environments" (discussion paper)
  • ASCILITE Technology-Enhanced Learning Accreditation Standards
4
Hybrid & HyFlex learningIn-person and online, at the same time
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Hybrid and HyFlex teaching serve in-room and online students together. The trap is making the online group second-class — design so neither is.

  • Plan deliberate roles for both audiences; give online students a real voice, not just a view.
  • Build for accessibility from the start — captions, accessible documents, multiple ways to engage.
TEQSA resources
  • "How to use the HyFlex method to teach online and in person at the same time" (webinar)
  • UNSW guidelines for accessible blended and online courses

Before your first online session — a quick self-check

✓
I've told students exactly how and when I'll interact with them.
✓
My space is structured and predictable — students know where things are and what's next.
✓
I have a plan to spot and reach out to disengaged students early.
✓
My feedback will be timely, specific, and invites a reply.
✓
My materials are accessible (captions, readable documents, alternatives).
✓
I've built in at least one genuine moment of connection — or fun.
Source & attribution. This crash course is curated from TEQSA's Higher Education Good Practice Hub — Teaching and Learning. The underlying guides, webinars and papers are TEQSA's, drawn from a range of external sources and not generated by NTLSN. See the original page for the full resource set, links, and TEQSA's disclaimer.
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