Why your online teaching isn’t working. If it’s not the technology, what is it?

On successful completion of the course, participants will receive a certificate of attendance.

Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (Austria) – Lead and Host Institution

Janet Brown (CUAS) – Austria
Eithne Knappitsch (CUAS) – Austria

Online teaching often fails and we usually blame the platform (or the students!). But lecture-by-Teams/Zoom does not become better teaching because the camera is on, and a sharper microphone does not sharpen learning. When online courses do not work, the cause is almost always pedagogical, not technological.

This 2-hour synchronous session diagnoses what breaks down in online environments and works through design that helps fix it. The focus is the substance underneath the platform: how we make teaching relevant to learners; how learners engage with content, with each other and with the educator; what active, experiential and challenge-based learning require structurally; and how to redesign sessions so that participation and collaboration become the default rather than the exception.

Participants leave with a working framework, a small set of pedagogical design tools they can apply immediately and a clearer sense of where technology choices matter and where they do not.

The 2-hour session includes:

• A diagnostic warm-up in which participants identify their design bias and identify what is currently not working in their own online courses, before any new framing is introduced.
• A short input segment reframing the diagnosis: separating pedagogical design problems from technological ones, and locating active, experiential and challenge-based learning within that distinction.
• An example showing how a typical lecture-format online session is redesigned around learner activity, collaboration and structured challenge.
• A guided redesign activity in small breakout groups, in which participants apply the framework to one of their own course sessions and receive structured peer feedback.
• A synthesis and commitment round in which each participant leaves with one specific design change they will make to their next online session.

• To distinguish pedagogical design problems from technological problems in online teaching, and to give participants the language to make that distinction in their own work.
• To develop a working understanding of active, experiential and challenge-based learning as design principles and to show what each one requires of a synchronous online session.
• To equip participants with concrete redesign tools they can apply immediately and a structured way to test whether a design change has worked.