How nice it is when we teach an online course from beginning to end, with no errors, no problems, and no emergencies! Ah, but this is the stuff of fiction, for in reality each online instructor will encounter difficulties in his or her course. How each is handled can determine a good or poor outcome. What follows are the top five suggestions for handling all possible problems, followed by the three most common genres of problems, and how to respond to the most common three in each category: