For me, online teaching is never “on Tuesday at 2pm”. It doesn’t start and end at set times. The focus is more on how students structure their time, how I can help, how I can create situations and tasks that provoke thinking, and how I can help them move around obstacles.

For me, the performance of good teaching is more about teachers paying attention to students than it is about students paying attention to teachers. “Learning happens where [and when?] the learner is” @petergoodyear

As teachers, we can help students understand what they should do, when and why. Help them see the purpose and value of what we’ve designed for them. Help them to complete our designs, rather than try to trap them inside our expectations.

We can let students help us with our design of tasks. Design is great for learning. That’s one of the reasons I want teachers to focus more on designing tasks than on presentation, content and formal structures.

This is also the key to taking individual learners & their prior knowledge into account: go in with loose expectations & a flexible design and structure. Let students contribute to the design of their own tasks, but help them to do this well by clarifying rationales and purposes.

Think about the kind of social structure that will help them learn and get their work done. Mix collaboration and individual work. Encourage extended, formative (non-judgemental) dialogue around meaningful tasks. Encourage sharing of work-in-progress with peers and with teachers.

Check in with them where they are, offer to help them get their work done rather than demand to check that they are doing work. Help them to do better in their assessments by working with them before submission. Done right, this is teaching, not cheating.

With this mindset, annoying questions go away: should I ask students to turn cameras on; should I ban devices & phones; should I take attendance; how do I encourage engagement. Forget all of this, forget core content and fancy presentations. Focus on tasks, rationales, purposes.