The Center for Teaching Excellence and Instructional Technology are teaming up to offer resources to support you in developing your courses for the fall. We want to ensure that we offer resources that are beneficial to you, so we have created a Google form to collect information on types of resources that would be most helpful. We will use this material to finalize programming for the rest of the summer; we will share plans here early next week.

Past Summer Sessions:

Designing Your Course for Ease of Use – (Session Slides) (Session Recording Password: 6N@=2L5O)
Tuesday, June 23 at 3:30 pm via Zoom
Description: Tired of answering questions about where to find things in Canvas? How can you set up your Canvas course shell to maximize student ease of use?

This session will give you a tour of the generic course template used in many online courses and programs at St. Edward’s and explain how it is designed to benefit students through simpler navigation, use of modules, and other features.

Designing Classes for Flexibility – (Session Slides) (Session Recording)
Wednesday, June 10th at 2:00 pm via Zoom – https://stedwards.zoom.us/j/94882787752
This event will be recorded and a link will be made available here.
RSVP
Description: Feeling overwhelmed by fall prep? Concerned about developing your class for multiple modalities (face-to-face, hybrid, online)?

Let’s work together to:

• streamline your process
• consider key goals you have for students
• think about adaptable, flexible course design that helps you adapt to different contexts, as needed

Join Jennifer Jefferson and Rebecca Davis as we discuss designing your courses for flexibility. We’ll address key principles of backward design and learning outcomes as we offer approaches to rethinking classes. Our goal with this session is to provide all participants with a framework that can pivot to multiple modalities, in the hopes of reducing workload in these uncertain times.

Instructional Technology and the Center for Teaching Excellence will host workshops and Q&A sessions on remote instruction topics. You don’t need to sign up, just click on the Zoom link provided at the scheduled time to join.

Past Events

Finals in a Remote-Instruction Context: Helping Students Meet Your Learning Objectives (Session Slides) (Session Recording)
3 pm-4 pm via Zoom
Tuesday, April 28
Description: Join us for a discussion on how to support students and maintain the integrity of your course as we discuss both the logistics of collecting assignments, setting up exams, and recording presentations and how to support all students, including those who have accommodations, in fulfilling your learning objectives.
Presenters: Brenda Adrian, Laura Youngblood, Rebecca Davis, Kendall Swanson, Jennifer Jefferson

Monday, March 30 through Friday, April 17:

All the following sessions will be hosted in the following Zoom meeting room: https://stedwards.zoom.us/j/559734502

Q&A sessions for remote instruction will be open Monday, March 30 through Friday, April 3 from 2–4 p.m. every day

In addition to the daily Q+A sessions, there will also be special topic-focused sessions:

Faculty Learning Community Session:
Designing Assignments with Instructor Workload in Mind (Session Slides) (Session Recording)
3:30pm
Tuesday, March 31

Other Topic-Specific Workshops:
Group Work and Collaboration (Session Slides)(Session Recording)
11:30 a.m.–noon and 8–8:30 p.m.
Wednesday, April 1

Integrating the Current Moment into Your Courses (Session Slides) (Session Recording)
11:30 a.m.–noon and 8–8:30 p.m.
Wednesday, April 8
Panelists: Mary Culkin, Nicole Trevino, and Connie Rey Rodriguez, Rebecca Frost Davis and Jennifer Jefferson
Session Description: How are our students doing? What support structures is the university providing? What considerations does this moment present for teaching and learning? This panel discussion will share insights from the student of concern process, Academic Support Services, Student Affairs, and the Remote Instruction Workgroup and offer a chance for faculty to share what they are seeing and ask questions.

Maintaining Community While Teaching Remotely (Session Slides) (Session Recording)
11:30 a.m.–noon
Wednesday, April 15

Monday, March 23 through Friday, March 27

Q&A sessions for remote instruction will be open from 2–4 p.m. every day.

Topic-focused sessions will change each day:

Let’s Take a Collective Breath: Getting Started with Remote Instruction (Session Slides) (Session Recording)
11:30 a.m.–noon, 8–8:30 p.m.
Monday, March 23

Canvas: Creating Announcements, Modules and Assignments (Session Slides) (Session Recording)
11:30 a.m.–noon, 8–8:30 p.m.
Tuesday, March 24

Conducting Classes in Zoom (Session Slides) (Session Recording)
11:30 a.m.–noon, 8–8:30 p.m.
Wednesday, March 25

Panopto: Recording Short Lectures and Student Presentations (Session Slides)(Session Recording)
11:30 a.m.–noon, 8–8:30 p.m.
Thursday, March 26

Conducting Classes in Zoom (Session Slides) (Session Recording)
11:30 a.m.–noon, 8–8:30 p.m.
Friday, March 27

Faculty Learning Community Session:
Best Practices for Making Videos (Session Slides) (Session Recording)
12:30pm
Friday March 27
Join us online to learn about evidence-based best practices for creating course videos.  We’ll talk about making instructional videos and recording presentations or mini-lectures.  You’ll learn more about optimum length, legibility, accessibility, scripting, best ways to record, sound & video quality, framing, lighting and captioning.

Focusing In: What’s Key in the Transition to Remote Learning?
With so many guides, resources, and choices, it might be challenging to hone in on the key elements of getting your classes ready for remote learning. In this guide, we offer two options, one for asynchronous learning and one for synchronous learning. Both options focus on two key components: keep communication foregrounded and include a way to share resources and collect work. Then, think about elements that you might want to add that align with your learning goals and your interests–you can add in an element or two from the menus below, once you get the basics worked out. You can think about this approach as a menu–you will have the base version, and what add-ons do you want (or not)  to include?

Asynchronous Version

To start out, you’ll want to make sure to communicate with your students and to have a way to collect and review work. You can do that through Canvas, which has near-universal adoption across campus.

Communicate

Create Announcements in Canvas or send messages through the Canvas Inbox. Use announcements or messages to check in with students and let them know about updates to course materials, activities, and upcoming assignments.  Your students are used to seeing you multiple times per week, so announcements and messages allow you to maintain a connection with your students–we can work toward maintaining community through the use of announcements and emails.

Completing work

Organize information for students to access content–you can upload PDFs of readings, links to library resources, and copies of your lecture slides if you’d like.  Think about how you use Canvas already–if you have places for these items, great–just continue using them. If you don’t, you can do that in modules (our recommendation) to help keep all material for one class session or week together.  If you’ve never used Modules, you might find these guides helpful:

• Adding Modules
• Adding Content to Modules

Setup assignments so students can submit homework online. Set up assignments in Canvas to allow online submissions.  Students can submit most types of documents directly to Canvas, and you can even grade them within Canvas, using Speed Grader and a built-in rubric, if you’d like.

Then, once you feel like you have a plan for communicating and collecting work, consider what other goals you have for your class.

You can refine your approach to communicating and sharing/receiving work through adding another element, either through Canvas (denoted with an * below) or another tool:

• Add a discussion element to help foster more interaction between your students who may be missing the vibrancy of your classroom.*
• Integrate a social annotation application such as Perusall or Hypothesis* to encourage student discussion and interaction with your readings by having them collaboratively annotate resources.
• Record a Panopto lecture and include it in the module.
  Post an online quiz for students as a knowledge check.*
• Meet with your students for office hours in Zoom or Google Hangouts Meet or, if you’re comfortable online, hold class during your regularly scheduled time using Zoom.

Synchronous Version

This version shares a similar common ground with the asynchronous version: at a basic level, you, too, will want to communicate and collect work. The added component to this version is including a synchronous class meeting to deliver information and allow for collaboration.

Communicate

• Create Announcements in Canvas or send messages through the Canvas Inbox. Use announcements or email to check in with students and let them know about updates to course materials, activities and upcoming assignments. Your students are used to seeing you multiple times per week, so announcements and messages allow you to maintain a connection with your students–we can work toward maintaining community through the use of announcements and emails.
• Hold class during your regularly scheduled time using Zoom.

Completing work

• Organize information for students to access content–you can upload PDFs of readings, links to library resources, and copies of your lecture slides. Think about how you use Canvas already–if you have places for these items, great–just continue using them. If you don’t, you can do that in modules (our recommendation) to help keep all material for one class session or week together.  If you’ve never used Modules, you might find these guides helpful:
  • Adding Modules
  • Adding Content to Modules
• Setup assignments so students can submit homework online. Set up assignments in Canvas to allow online submissions.  Students can submit most types of documents directly to Canvas.

Bonus elements to include, depending on your course goals and needs:

• Add a discussion element to help foster more interaction between your students who may be missing the vibrancy of your classroom.*
• Use a social annotation application such as Perusall or Hypothesis* to encourage student discussion and interaction with your readings.
• Record a Panopto lecture and include it in the module.
• Post an online quiz or exam for students.*
• Use Zoom breakout rooms for small group collaboration.
• Meet with your students for office hours in Zoom.

As you begin to prepare your response to your students’ needs to having access to coursework online, you might be feeling a bit overwhelmed by the process. That’s why it’s best to begin by taking a deep breath and realizing you’ve got this. You’re not being asked to radically change your teaching behaviors and use a bunch of new technologies all at once. Instead, you’re being asked to consider what you will offer your students in a two-week period.

It is also important to emphasize that many of your students are going to be overwhelmed by this too. Trying to simplify your approach will help everyone–no one needs to try out everything. Think about what you use already, such as email and Canvas, and what it can do. In the end, we want students spending less time learning the tools and more time on the course material. We’ve prepared some additional resources, too:

• Teaching Remotely: A Guide for Faculty in Special Circumstances
• Online Instruction FAQs 

So let’s begin this process by looking at your syllabus. Identify the lecture material, in-class activities, as well as the homework and assessment. Once you’ve identified them, look below to find strategies divided into categories. These sections will give you both low-tech options and high-tech options while keeping in mind that you should choose what is best for you and your students.

Lecture Material

Generally speaking, most of your lecture material will be covered by the assigned readings and resources already. Build off of the assigned readings by providing one of the following:

• a lecture component in the form of a Microsoft Word document, i.e., lecture notes, or
• a reading guide with questions students should be able to answer after they’ve done the reading, or
• a PowerPoint slide deck with presenter notes with/without a voice-over, or
• a recorded video lecture using Panopto or YouTube.

In-class Activities

Many of your in-class activities will require interaction on the part of your students. You can move class discussions to Canvas using the discussion tool or use a video conferencing tool such as Zoom. It’s helpful to know that if you can Skype/FaceTime, you can Zoom. This will allow your students and you to “see” each other in real time to conduct lectures, discussions, presentations, and activities. You can also use collaborative software like Google docs to have students build information together.

It’s also important to stress that not all of your classroom activities will have an online equivalent, you may find that you have to redesign or substitute it for something else entirely.

A note about labs: if possible you’ll want to delay these assignments until on-campus instruction resumes. Otherwise, you could find videos on YouTube or LinkedIn Learning or use a free online Virtual Lab or PhET that demonstrates what will be learned.

Homework/Assignments

You’ll want to consider how much students will be turning in to you. If you’re using something like email this can eventually become a bit overwhelming especially if you’re teaching multiple classes (and as such Canvas is our preferred method.) Think about what is absolutely essential for students to show mastery of the learning concepts and then require those items be turned in.

As stated before, you can have students email or set up the Canvas’ assignment feature to have students turn in work for each assignment. These can be in the forms of images, audio, video, and/or written work.

Testing

Perhaps you planned to test your students through a multiple-choice quiz or scheduled an exam during this time period. You can redesign your exam to be a take-home, fill-out in a Microsoft Word document and submit via email or Canvas. If it’s timed, you can set it up by using the Quiz feature in Canvas, which allows you to set time requirements as well as how many attempts are available.

Communication

Send an email to your students discussing what you have in mind for the next two weeks. Try to gauge how comfortable students will be with the changes. For example, if you’re using a video conferencing tool, ask them about it. You can also “practice” with students to reduce the anxiety of starting out the gate picture perfect. You may find that acknowledging the stress of the change will help reduce anxiety and keep your students achieving.

Also you might decide students will need an individualized response more than what email can provide during this time. You can use a video conferencing tool (e.g., Google Hangouts Meet) to quickly meet with your students online and have them share their screen with you.

Beyond Two Weeks

You may be wondering about teaching your course online beyond these two weeks. For this, you will need to consider how you can make the online experience just as rich and high-touch as your face-to-face classes. This may require learning a little more tools and being creative with the strategies you employ in your classroom. This article can help you consider the options of Teaching Remotely more fully when you’re ready.

We’re Available to Help!

As always, the Instructional Technology team is here to help you with whatever new tool you decide to pick up as well as with redesigning some of your face-to-face activities to online. Together, we can ensure that our students continue to have the quality education that St. Edward’s University provides.

Special thanks to Jennifer Jefferson of the Center for Teaching Excellence for helping shape this article.