Online classes: Any good ways to avoid having too many interruptions but at the same time not leaving anyone behind? I've attended a couple online classes and I'll be teaching my own in a short while. And what I noticed is that usually the lecturer has a lot of interruptions from people who ask them to repeat something, to clarify on a topic, or they even divert the topic to ask something else (like "can I do the same thing with a different IDE?").

When I teach on-site I notice I don't have as many questions as I've observed here (probably because "hiding" behind a computer screen makes people more comfortable to ask questions). And I really welcome all kinds of questions and hate it when someone gets behind just because they're afraid to ask.

So I'm trying to find a balance here. It would be a great thing if I had someone assisting students, so they can go on a private chat with whoever is asking a question and answer without disrupting the class. But that's not a possibility here. It's just me. And I also know another option would be to say all questions will be answered at the end of the lecture, but I'm hesitant on this since the risk of leaving people behind during the class is higher.

Any other ideas on how to handle this? I'd hate to be one of those lecturers that talks non-stop with people just nodding without understanding too much of what's being said.
If you go through your lectures, you'll find most of the them actually cover between 3 and 6 separate distinct topics. We can take advantage of this to improve online delivery. Well before an online class meeting, look at your notes and identify those topic areas. Now instead of one meeting, think in terms of a separate session (usually 10 minutes or less) for each of those shorter topic areas.

Even better, you can almost always find good content freely available online that will cover those topics. Where finding a single replacement for the complete lecture would not have been possible, the smaller topics will each likely have a good option or two available. This online content will often be produced, in that it has good lighting, supporting animations, edited closed captions, etc. If you define the topic narrowly enough, this often even holds for upper-level undegrad work (graduate coursework may be different). 

Now you can assign these videos as prerequisites for your class meeting (often with a very short and low-value quiz, just to provide the extra incentive for students to complete this work). You may still need to cover one or two of your original topics personally, but finding the videos is often much less work than creating or delivering your own. 

This now lets you change how the conference session is run, whether on Zoom, Hangouts, Teams, Skype, WebEx, BBB, BlueJeans, or whatever. Lecture content is now much shorter, if it happens at all, and therefore less susceptible to these interruptions. Instead, these meetings are about handling class business: introducing homework, setting expectations, providing review material and guides, helping students understand where to pay the most attention in the outside material, and answering questions... you know, the kind of question that would have been an interruption before. It's now part of the primary purpose of the session.

Pedagogically this is called a flipped classroom approach, and it has a number of documented benefits outside or our current situation: Students learn better with the shorter 10 minute sessions, they have the original lecture material for review, they can catch up much easier for missed class times, they can use their video player to slow down or speed up delivery, or pause to take notes without disrupting other students, and it increases student access to the instructor.