Online teaching can quickly become overwhelming. Finding ways to offer detailed and quality support, learning, and feedback, but through efficient and time-saving methods, will mean higher quality learning for less instructional time. For example, save all the course announcements, as they can be reused time and again. Create files of all tutorials and guidance videos, which can be used over and over. We will continue to discuss time-saving strategies throughout this eBook on each of the main topics covered.

In this book we will stress over and over that being choosy is the key to offering quality online learning design and delivery. Choose the right tools, for the right job, for the right need, for the right content. Choose the right teaching approaches, for the right learning needs, for the right learning content. Be choosy. If an instructor has too many tools in a course it can create cognitive overload of the students, who become overwhelmed and then they are learning to use tools rather than learning the course content. On the other hand, having too few means boring learning materials and few connection methods, and that loses student interest and dedication as well. Try to choose the right amount of tools for the needs of a given course and its topics. For example, giving the students ten ways to contact the instructor via ten different chat tools is too much. Just choose one. By making smart and efficient choices then the tools work for the course and students rather than the other way around.