When facing a task of completing an online assignment, you need to be extra careful. Here are a few tips which will help you to design and deliver an assignment successfully.

Take it seriously – As teacher, take an online assignment seriously and so will your students. Do not subject your students to the same sort of assignment for every course. focus on your own strengths as a teacher and on the particular goal which you are trying to reach. Then, you can decide to employ a particular type of online activity.

Communicate clear expectations – Be very clear and transparent to the students about your expectations, the procedure for evaluation and its criteria, and the form of guidance which they can expect. Avoid confusion while giving the assignment online.

Design (small) success experiences – Experiencing success is always motivating. This allows the students to build confidence, trust and establish social ties. First, you can start with a small and concrete task or topic and gradually make the task or topic more complex and abstract. Secondly, it is very important to choose an appropriate group size while you tutor online.

Make the activity worth the time spent on it – all different activities in a course should be designed to complement each other and to provide an added value. The main goal of any activity is to engage the students in an active and meaningful processing of the subject matter which leads to a deep, appropriate and applicable understanding.

Offer choices – Offering choices in subject or activities are also in line with the idea that all are different. To stimulate excellence among the students by allowing and encouraging them to develop their own talents.

Start with a real problem and finish with a real product – To increase the assignment’s usefulness which is as understood by the students, you can give them a practical problem or a research question. Studying and understanding the subject then becomes a logical and necessary step to answer the question or to solve the problem. Thus, you have established the need and relevance of studying the literature in a natural way.

Allow ‘identities’ or ‘reputations’ to be built  – Letting the students develop their individual talents and then positively reinforcing those talents is much more effective rather than focusing only on correcting the shortcomings or mistakes.

Moderating: be sensitive‐responsive – be quite passive but also be responsive when students get stuck or move ‘off track’. In this way, you give the students the confidence needed that they are going in the right direction and you are always there to help them if need arises.

Create a ‘safe’ and constructive atmosphere – Creating a safe learning environment is very relevant for online assignments. Since learning is all about being open to new ideas, an atmosphere which is too critical risks students in their existing ideas.

Following the above mentioned tips will definitely help you to become an effective free online teacher.