One important aspect of your virtual teaching strategy is focusing and measuring performance. This involves: (a) relating all assignments to real-world performance competencies, and (b) establishing grading standards to objectively evaluate whether students meet these in their formal papers and projects. 

Educator Peter Pipe challenges instructors to create a "Performance Pyramid" for each course they design (Pipe, 1975, p. 99). You begin by asking, "What would a successful student do in relationship to my discipline one month, six months or one year after they finish my course?" You then list all "critical incidents" or real-world encounters that your ex-student might likely face, and how they would successfully handle it on the basis of your instruction. Then you rework these critical incidents into "actions statements," with corresponding subordinate skills. This performance map then becomes the "raw materials from which objectives are fashioned" (p. 102).

Once you have course objectives that relate to real-world performance, you have the standard from which to assess any student assignment. Every major assignment, whether a formal paper or integrative project, should have a corresponding grading rubric that lets your students know what grade will be given for what level of performance.