Abstract
High-levels of classroom engagement and on-task behavior have been linked to positive outcomes for students. In traditional classroom settings when levels of on-task behaviors are low, teacher integration of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) can facilitate improvement in student engagement. PBIS strategies such as creating clear routines and expectations, explicit instruction on expected behaviors, acknowledging behavior, and a high level of opportunities to respond have demonstrated efficacy for improving engagement across grade levels. As teachers increasingly adjust their teaching to virtual platforms these evidence-based practices should continue to be a part of their instructional repertoire. Unfortunately, teachers may have little experience in leveraging such practices to improve engagement in virtual classrooms. With the recent shift to virtual instruction due to the pandemic, it is important teachers are equipped with knowledge and skills to implement PBIS in virtual classroom settings to improve student outcomes. This manuscript provides a how-to guide to support teachers and administrators in effective and efficient use of PBIS in online platforms to bridge the gap in practice. Steps and an implementation checklist are included to improve virtual learning engagement by utilizing tools within online platforms such as Zoom and GSuite to clarify virtual expectations and increase student demonstration of expected behaviors.
Keywords
Mr. Perez is a special education teacher in a middle school who has been teaching for 6 years. He is known for having well-developed skills in implementation of positive behavior supports and is called on frequently to support other teachers in identification and implementation of strategies to promote expected classroom behaviors. He recently received notice from his administrator he would be expected to provide virtual instruction for two groups of students daily. There are eight students in each group who are served in a resource learning environment under the IDEA categories of autism, other health impairment, and emotional/behavioral disorder. Mr. Perez meets with the students on the 1st day and recognizes a need to integrate strategies to promote expected classroom behaviors after observing increases in off-task and disruptive behaviors over the course of the online lesson. Despite feeling confident in his classroom management skills, Mr. Perez isn’t sure how to utilize behavior management practices in this online learning environment. However, he is certain building a virtual classroom management plan is necessary to promote expected behaviors in this context.
Disruptive and off-task behavior in the classroom environment can interfere with a teacher’s ability to deliver instruction and can result in lower-levels of teacher self-efficacy related to classroom management (Klassen & Chiu, 2010; Reinke et al., 2013). Self-efficacy refers to belief of capability (Zee & Helma, 2016). It is important to promote high levels of teacher self-efficacy as it has been linked to teacher work-related motivation and satisfaction (Zee & Helma, 2016). When teachers have tools that increase desired student responses, they are more likely to experience increases in self-efficacy or perceived capability. To improve learning environments and increase expected behaviors, teachers may choose to integrate Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) into their classrooms. PBIS is a system of support involving direct instruction of expected behaviors and modification of the classroom environment through antecedents and consequences to promote student demonstration of expected behaviors (Horner et al., 2010). PBIS has demonstrated efficacy related to improving student behavior (Saez et al., 2012) and decreasing problem behavior (Horner et al., 2010).
Unfortunately, with the shift to virtual instruction in response to the pandemic, teachers may face challenges related to integrating best practices into the virtual context due to limited experience or training (Rice & Dawley, 2009). It is important teachers are equipped with knowledge to implement PBIS in virtual settings given the relationship between PBIS and improved teacher self-efficacy (Klassen & Chiu, 2010) and student behavior (Saez et al., 2012). PBIS strategies such as creating clear routines, explicit instruction on expected behaviors, acknowledging behavior, opportunities to respond, and providing access to reinforcers have demonstrated efficacy for improving behaviors across grade levels and have been identified as High-Leverage Practices for inclusive educational environments by the Council for Exceptional Children and the CEEDAR Center (see highleveragepractices.org; McLeskey et al., 2019). This article provides steps for implementation of these positive and proactive approaches to improve virtual classroom behavior and learning engagement by utilizing tools within remote learning applications such as Zoom (e.g., polls, emojis, breakout rooms) and GSuite (e.g., Google Forms and Google Slides). An implementation checklist is presented in Table 1 to further support integration of these strategies to promote expected behaviors in virtual contexts.
Virtual Classroom Management Elements.
Developing Routines
One key feature of an effective behavior management plan includes creating and teaching classroom routines (Myers et al., 2017). Classroom routines create predictability in the learning environment, which can support students in understanding what is expected of them during instruction (Kerns & Clemens, 2007). In traditional classroom settings, teachers will often create specific procedures for routines such as entering a classroom, gathering necessary materials, and submitting assignments. When developing procedures for online instruction, teachers should consider their typical classroom routines and mirror those in the online environment. It is important teachers keep similar routines day-to-day in the online learning environment to promote consistency for students as well as themselves. Additionally, teachers must dedicate time to explicitly teach students to follow the classroom routines by describing the steps or behaviors associated with the routine, creating opportunities for students to practice the routine, and providing feedback related to students’ demonstration of the routine (Myers et al., 2017).
Ready to Learn
Routines should be developed for times in which higher rates of problem behaviors are observed (Office of Special Education Programs [OSEP], 2015). In an online environment, problem behaviors may occur at the onset of the instructional session and be related to student readiness to learn. Promoting readiness ensures students have their learning space prepared and have needed resources and materials to actively participate in the lesson. When students come to a virtual instruction session without such resources and materials their readiness to learn diminishes. To address this common barrier, prior to the virtual instruction session teachers can embed prompts or pre-corrects to promote readiness (OSEP, 2015). For example, a slide to share with students at the onset of the instructional session including the needed materials for engaging in the lesson’s activities (see Figure 1) can act as a visual prompt. With this prompt, students have knowledge of the instructional materials needed and are able to gather needed materials for learning before the lesson begins.

Materials needed and warm-up slide sample.
Instructional Routines
When creating instructional routines, learning sessions should follow a similar sequence of events day-to-day, such as, beginning with a warm-up activity, then introducing the new skill in a short lesson, practicing the skill in small groups, then coming back together to share at the end of the instructional session. By building consistent lesson structure, students know what to expect which may reduce interfering behaviors that can accompany unpredictable routines and transitions (Myers et al., 2017). In online learning environments, teachers should create similar structures within their lessons. For instance, teachers may use warm-up activities in their traditional classroom to facilitate engagement at the beginning of the instructional session (e.g., responding to a question, reading a short passage, or completing a few math problems). This can be used similarly in Zoom with the Share Screen tool to share a warm-up activity with the class at the onset of the session as shown in Figure 1.
Assignment Submission
Another important routine is related to assignment submission. In the online environment, students need to understand how and where to submit assignments. Teachers should create consistent procedures for submission of assignments and follow those same procedures for each submission. Teachers should dedicate time to explicitly teaching the behaviors associated with the routine (Myers et al., 2017; State et al., 2019) by modeling the assignment submission procedures, providing students the opportunity to practice submitting an assignment, and giving specific positive or corrective feedback related to student adherence to the submission routine. If at any point the teacher decides to shift platforms or change submission procedures, it will again be important for the teacher to model the steps explicitly for students. Because many schools haven taken a hybrid approach to instruction in which students attend school on-site and virtually, teachers should create assignment submission procedures that can be maintained across different learning environments, so students do not have to follow different procedures from day-to-day. For example, if students submit assignments on virtual days on a virtual platform such as Google Classroom, students should follow the same procedures to submit assignments on face-to-face days. Consistent routines will minimize the labor required to re-create learning processes with shifts from in classroom to virtual learning.
Teaching Expected Behaviors
Effective teachers recognize the importance of identifying and teaching desired classroom behaviors. When shifting to virtual instructional environments, teachers should identify three to five behaviors critical to a positive and productive virtual learning session. The behaviors identified should be specific, observable, measurable, easily understood by students, and positively stated, focusing on the behaviors students should demonstrate (State et al., 2019). For an online environment, teachers should consider aligning their expected behaviors with school campus expectations such as Be Responsible, Be Respectful, & Be Safe (Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, 2020). In a virtual context, examples of responsible learning behaviors include finding a quiet place to learn, gathering needed materials (e.g., pencil and paper, whiteboard and marker), and being on time. Respectful online behaviors might include muting when not speaking, keeping camera on, and following directions the first time. To be safe in a virtual environment, students identify a stable surface for their device, sit in a chair, and use materials appropriately.
In a face-to-face classroom, teachers will often solicit student feedback related to expected behaviors (OSEP, 2015) to validate the rules. This may also serve to further motivate students to demonstrate the expected behaviors (State et al., 2019). In a virtual classroom environment, teachers can create opportunities for students to provide input on the expected behaviors through a class discussion and by using tools in Zoom. For example, on the Zoom whiteboard, which is accessed through the sharing option on the toolbar teachers can post a rule, such as, “Be Respectful” and ask students to post examples of respect in the online learning environment on the whiteboard using the annotation text or draw tool.
Once expected behaviors have been identified and validated with students, steps should be taken to explicitly teach the behaviors (Morrissey, et al., 2010; State et al., 2019). The explicit instruction sequence includes: (1) defining and describing the target behavior; (2) identifying the rationale for demonstrating the behavior; and (3) providing students the opportunity to demonstrate examples and non-examples of the behavior with feedback. It can also be important to visually depict the behaviors in a behavior matrix such as in the example in Figure 2 (State et al., 2019). When teaching the expected behaviors, it is important to first identify the umbrella term such as “Be Respectful” and define this term by describing the specific behaviors students show to demonstrate respect. When defining and describing the behavior, the teacher could say, “Today, we are going to discuss what it looks like to be respectful in our online classroom environment. One way we can demonstrate respect is by finding a quiet place to learn.” After defining the behavior, the teacher provides the opportunity for students to share the importance of demonstrating the behavior by posing discussion questions (e.g., “Why is it important to find a quiet place to learn?”) Once students are given the opportunity to share the importance, the teacher then creates opportunities for the students to demonstrate examples and non-examples of the behavior. For example in relation to finding a quiet place to learn, the teacher can ask students to take their devices to a quiet place or if a quiet place is not available requesting students mute their microphone. The teacher then poses a question to one student, waits for the student to respond, and then asks if everyone in the class could hear the student’s response. Next, to demonstrate a non-example, the teacher asks the students to find a “loud” place to learn by turning on the TV or some music and un-muting their microphone. The teacher follows the procedure of asking a student in the group a question in this noisy environment, then checking if everyone was able to hear. To facilitate demonstration of expected behaviors, teachers should make time to teach all behaviors following these same procedures.

Classroom expectations matrix sample.
Mr. Perez has taught his students the online virtual routines and all expected behaviors identified within his classroom-level behavior matrix. However, he notices students are coming to the session without needed materials. Additionally, a few appear to be watching another device during the session and one student has not actively engaged in completion of the shared Google Slide during the breakout session. Although Mr. Perez has spent adequate time teaching virtual classroom routines and expected behaviors, he hasn’t yet integrated strategies throughout instruction to support demonstration of expected behaviors such as using pre-corrects, acknowledging target behaviors, and providing high levels of opportunities to respond.
Prompting and Acknowledging Expected Behavior
After instruction of target behaviors, teachers can continue to promote expected behaviors in the virtual environment through precorrection and acknowledgment of behavior. Precorrection involves prompting students to demonstrate expected behaviors (e.g., “Remember, during our breakout session today, you can show following directions the first time by reading the assigned section of the text and responding in the group guide”; Ennis et al., 2012). To use precorrection with efficacy, it is important to provide these prompts at the onset of instructional sessions and prior to any shifts in teaching arrangements, such as, when students move into breakout sessions.
Another strategy leading to improvement in student behavior is positive attention for demonstration of expected behaviors (Bruhn et al., 2019; Moore et al., 2019, Royer et al., 2018). In the virtual environment, students can be praised individually or as a whole group. When praising students for demonstration of expected behaviors, teachers should ensure praise is specific. Specific praise pairs a praise statement with a description of the target behavior such as “Nice job bringing your materials to class for our Zoom session.” If students prefer discrete positive attention, the chat feature in Zoom can be used to send a direct and private message (e.g., Thank you, Sammy, for using your materials appropriately).
Providing corrective feedback in class is also important, yet in a virtual context it can be challenging to follow recommendations for correcting behavior (e.g., discrete, private, immediate; OSEP, 2015). To address this challenge, teachers can utilize the chat feature within Zoom to provide feedback to students individually by sending a private message correcting the problem behavior (e.g., Remember to be responsible in our class, you need to find a quiet place to learn). Alternatively, the teacher could provide general corrective statements to the group related to interfering behaviors such as, “Remember, we all need to keep ourselves muted when we are not speaking.” Another option for providing corrective feedback occurs when shifting students to breakout sessions. Using the manual breakout session option, the teacher can assign all students to breakout sessions with the exception of the student demonstrating interfering behaviors. Once the breakout rooms are opened and all other students have shifted from the main session, the teacher can then privately provide corrective feedback to the student.
Creating Virtual Opportunities to Respond
Another practice to increase active engagement in the virtual classroom is opportunities to respond (OTR) (Heward, 2019). An OTR involves teacher construction of questions related to the content to solicit student response during instruction (Heward, 2019). When implementing OTR, teachers should include approximately three OTRs per minute (Menzies et al., 2017) and use a variety of questions and response methods to facilitate active engagement. Instead of relying on simple yes or no questions, or broad questions, such as, “Does everyone understand?” teachers should craft questions aligned with the content that provide insight into the level of student understanding (Heward, 2019). There are many tools within Zoom to create high-quality OTR such as polls and participant nonverbal responses. To use polling in Zoom, prior to the instructional session a teacher will create questions to pose and add questions to a poll. When creating a poll, the teacher can select the anonymous option to hide the identity of students responding or choose for the answers to be linked to the participant’s name allowing the teacher to download a report of students’ responses across questions at the end of the session. When creating a poll, it is also important to determine how the questions will be posed. Within Zoom sessions, questions associated with a poll are posed simultaneously. If the teacher desires questions be posed at different points during the instructional session, the teacher will need to create multiple polls with the polling tool. Because polling throughout the meeting can facilitate high frequency of OTR, it may be beneficial for teachers to create multiple polls to spread questions throughout the session.
Another tool in Zoom that can be used to increase OTR is the nonverbal feedback options (yes, no, go slower, go faster, thumbs up, or thumbs down) in the participant list. These responses can be used for simultaneous student response in a virtual environment similar to the use of response card systems in a traditional classroom setting (Heward, 2019). For example, if a teacher would like to pose a series of true or false questions to check student understanding, the teacher could request students select “yes” for true or “no” for false. If the teacher prefers to pose a question in a multiple-choice format, the teacher can identify “yes” as A, “no” as B, “go slower” as C, and “go faster” as D (Levy, 2020). To promote authentic responses when using the participant menu options it will be important to incorporate wait time prior to response. Teachers can accomplish this by posting a question on a shareable slide and asking students to select their answer in their mind, then on the count of three share their answer on the participant menu. Once responses are shared, the teacher can call on specific students in the class to share the rationale for the response selected.
Teachers can also utilize applications in other platforms such as GSuite to create additional OTR within the instructional session. For instance, Google Forms is an efficient tool for soliciting student response during instruction. To use Google Forms, teachers identify questions before the instructional session and create a new form with such questions included. The teacher can then paste the link to the form in the chat box of the Zoom session, so students are able to access the form. Once students have accessed the form, the teacher can prompt response to specific questions throughout the session.
In traditional classroom settings, teachers may utilize a variety of student groups (e.g., small group, pairs) to promote OTR and build community (Maheady et al., 2019). Breakout sessions can be used in Zoom to create similar arrangements in the virtual context. When integrating breakout sessions into virtual instruction, teachers may face challenges related to maintaining high levels of expected behavior and engagement. In such instances, the GSuite application, Google Slides, can be used to monitor students during breakouts (Levy, 2020). As shown in Figure 3, the teacher can create a slide for each group within Google Slides that includes a team name to correspond to the breakout session name and identifies roles for students to fill within the breakout group. Prior to shifting students to their breakout session, the teacher will share the slides. Once students are in their breakout sessions students note who is filling each role on the shared Google Slides and begin work on the assigned task. The teacher can then monitor group progress by scrolling through each slide. If a group does not appear to be completing the task, the teacher can visit the breakout session to provide additional support.

Breakout session slide sample.
Mr. Perez is seeing his students using the established expected behaviors and responding to his prompts on chat to address concerns more consistently. He would like to build upon this success and his students’ progress. He asks a fellow teacher to sit in on a 15-minute Zoom session to watch for a few teacher (i.e., immediate and specific praise and correction of expected behaviors) and student behaviors (i.e., student responses) from the group lesson. Ms. Lawrence and Mr. Perez have a quick text chat later that day during which Ms. Lawrence shares what she noticed about his use of praise and correction, including additional opportunities. She also noticed that a couple of students seemed slower to respond than the group as a whole. While Ms. Lawrence is impressed with Mr. Perez’s use of praise and correction, she suggests that individual students and perhaps the whole class might benefit from reinforcement beyond praise.
Providing Reinforcement
In traditional classroom settings when seeking to produce desirable changes to behavior, providing reinforcement is key (Scheeler et al., 2019). Thus, it is important teachers consider ways to provide students with access to reinforcers in the virtual classroom environment to recognize students for demonstrating expected behaviors and support maintenance of such behaviors. Reinforcement selection must be guided by student preference which can be determined by using preference assessments. Google Forms can be used to assess student preference for different reinforcers in virtual contexts. To create this type of assessment, teachers identify different activities (e.g., dance off, freetime chat, share something from home, play a game) and create a checklist question in Google Forms. Teachers then administer the form to students by asking them to check the activities listed which they would enjoy. When using a Google Form to solicit student feedback regarding reinforcers, it can be beneficial to request students include their name in a separate question on the form to ensure reinforcers during instruction selected are appealing to those demonstrating higher levels of problem behavior who may benefit from individualized reinforcement. Once reinforcers have been identified, teachers should create clear criteria for access. For example, at the onset of the instructional session, the teacher might indicate students will have the opportunity to engage in a free chat at the end of the instructional session if students follow directions the first time for the duration of the lesson. When embedding reinforcement in virtual sessions, it is important teachers provide access to reinforcement regularly and vary the reinforcers provided (Scheeler et al., 2019).
Conclusion
Effective teachers rely on best practices to produce desirable outcomes for learners. As teachers shift instruction to virtual environments, they should continue to leverage evidence-based practices when teaching. This article provides descriptions of positive and proactive practices that promote expected student behaviors and steps or considerations for integrating such practices into virtual instructional environments. Developing clear routines, teaching expected behaviors, maintaining high rates of opportunities to respond, and providing reinforcers to promote demonstration and maintenance of behaviors can be readily implemented in virtual contexts. By embedding such practices into the virtual learning setting, teachers can support students in demonstrating expected behaviors to facilitate high levels of engagement and learning which in-turn can improve the teacher’s sense of self-efficacy related to providing instruction in the virtual context.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
