Developing Course Material: Best Practices for Online Lecture

Lectures are a piece of the teaching puzzle and if done well, can really enhance a course. Lectures have been an ingrained part of teaching. They serve a function in the educational setting. In a traditional class, lecture served to summarize the course materials, highlight important points, dedicate time to difficult materials, discuss previously known facts and theories and relay important course specific information. In an online environment, you may not use a lecture format for all these functions so the objective of the online lecture could be very different and therefore, your approach will need to be changed.

• You want to make sure your lecture is well done in respect to teaching and that it's technically polished. 
• Think about the length of your video. You may want to break up a long lecture into segments so you don't loose learners' attention. 
• Know the technology tools you will have available. Some tools may let you add captions, pop-ups and more. 

When creating a lecture online, you need to take into consideration the same principles for creating online videos. You need to consider the attention span of your audience and keep lecture videos short and sweet. You need to have the human interaction element.

Remember to keep the lecture engaging. You can do this through interactive elements or even encouraging students to comment.