Whether it’s your first year teaching or you’re a senior instructor looking for a refresher, there are definitely steps that you should be taking to ensure that your students have a good course experience. So, here are the steps on how to effectively plan out a collaborative course.

Coordinate with your co-teacher

You don’t have to do all the work alone! In an international class setting, getting a co-teacher who can help you out with things that you don’t understand is vital. Once you have found a partner you can work with, here are some important things to ask them before starting a collaboration:

• What are the best hours or days to contact you?
• How many hours per week can you commit to the development of new course content?
• How many semesters or terms will this course run?
• Do you have any specific expectations regarding the time students should dedicate to this course per day?
• Do you have specific times of day for the classes in this course?

Planning your modules

Consider how you can build out your modules to align with your co-teacher. What topics will you include and what times will your classes take place? It might help to start with a mind map or you could use ImmerseU’s collaboration tools to plan meetings, collect files, and connect teaching materials that you would like to integrate. Here are a few more things to consider:

• Find components from your course plan that can be connected to your international partner’s curriculum.
• Find a schedule for classes that would work well with your timezone and your partner’s.
• Make sure you both have the right tools available to collaborate effectively. Your ImmerseU collaboration room already comes with chat, video meetings, and a calendar built in.

Collaborative Activities

Who wants to sit through an hour of pure lecture? Not even the top students in your class are down for that. Add more excitement to your classes by incorporating these activities to your course plan for more engagement from your students!

Icebreaker Activities

First meetings are usually very awkward, but thank God icebreaker activities were invented! Simple activities, such as virtual charades, snowball introduction, or maybe a virtual show and tell about their culture, should be enough to alleviate the awkward atmosphere among your students.

Small Group Discussions

After every lesson, separate your class into groups so they can talk about the things you have discussed. After a few minutes of discussion, they should pick a representative to share to everyone what the group has talked about.

With ImmerseU, you can easily create your course plan, add interactive activities, and collaborate with your co-teacher. Start planning!