Featured below is a sample lesson plan from the Customer Service course that I teach solely online. What I have found with teaching online courses is not the quantity of assignments, but the quality of assignments. It is imperative that the assignments and assessments are meaningful, thoughtful. While nothing will ever replace the physical classroom, the online classroom can be just as effective and interactive. The key to this is the interaction the teacher sets up with the students with various discussion boards or group projects. The lesson I have included here is a group project where students analyze a number of scenarios involving different types of customers and situations. The students have to contact each other via email or FaceTime or Google Hangouts in order to discuss how they would approach each scenario. Instead of trying to make this a whole class assignment, breaking the students into smaller groups allows them to work closer together with a smaller group where their ideas and thoughts are not lost in the mix of a class that may have more than 40 students.
"While nothing will ever replace the physical classroom, the online classroom can be just as effective and interactive. The key to this is the interaction the teacher sets up with the students with various discussion boards or group projects."