Online Teaching: My First Gantt Chart

As I'm preparing to teach an online class for the first time this coming semester, there is a lot of communication that needs to happen in the absence of face-to-face contact.  When there are no walls to post charts, calendars, and other important information, how do teachers help students learn where to look for it all?

First of all, the learning management system creates the organizational structure that replaces the drywall and whiteboards.  I'm working with Canvas, which has built-in tabs for syllabi, course overviews, calendars, announcements, and literally everything else pertaining to the class.

Taking an online class is a different learning experience.  Ease of access and freedom from scheduled regular classes during the school day are traded in for strictly enforced due dates and the need to stay on top of one's own calendar.  Scheduling for skype conferences and google hangouts, for example, needs to be done ahead of time before the deadline to meet that responsibility rolls around. Accountability comes into sharp focus in online classes.

This is even more important in project-based classes, where long term assignments that are student-driven can take weeks to complete, and procrastination can result in some serious difficulty for both teacher and student.

A great visual way for the teacher to communicate how many days a student should devote time to an assignment is by using a Gantt chart.

(From Wikipedia)

I made my first Gantt chart last night using Google Sheets.  I was going to use Smartsheet.com, and I might still use it for future classes, but anyway Google Sheets was an easy option.  I'm teaching a project-based class called Music Theory and Digital Composition.  This chart details classwork for the first week:

What's evident right off the bat is looking at what a student needs to focus on for each day of the week.  Is the work balanced evenly throughout the unit?  With a Gantt chart, I can tell students visually what I think the easiest way to tackle the workload is, and then students adjust according to their own schedules in order to meet each due date.

The 48 Minute Music Project is the one I'm hoping students work on over time.  Some students might wait until Friday to start it, but they might run into some obstacles with time-consuming workarounds.  I'll communicate this concern in the assignment instructions.

In the interest of creating some kind of rhythm to an otherwise asynchronous environment that characterizes the online class, each of my units are one week long.  If I were creating Gantt charts for longer timelines, I might opt to use Smartsheet.com, which has more flexible options for representing visual timelines.