Several equity-minded online teaching practices recommended by Dr. J. Luke Wood and others are especially important at the beginning of the term, when students may feel most uncertain about learning processes, environments, and relationships. These practices include:

Refraining from assumptions about student technical and learning skills; proactively providing resources and support for students to build these skills
Learning more about student motivations and goals, and how those connect to their decision to enroll in your class, in order to affirm and reinforce those intentions
Create a sense of community and shared learning through building relationships in online activities

View a recorded Zoom session (51 minutes) offered by curry mitchell and Jim Julius covering much of the content in this section.

Two key "Starting Strong" resources from the MiraCosta DE Handbook are:

Please also review 1.E2 Online Support Services at MiraCosta from earlier in this course.

At the end of this section, you should be able to do the following:

Select online learning readiness resources to recommend or provide for your students
Create a plan to communicate with students to prepare them for a successful start in your class
Develop activities for use at the beginning of a term to help develop community among students, and to help you to get to know students individually