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Strategies for Remote Learning and Teaching

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PREPARE · SHARE · ADAPT
When you realize you have to move aspects of your class from a face-to-face interaction into a remote learning and teaching context, it may be helpful to begin with these steps. The guiding principles are: prepare, share, and adapt.

Course Continuity: In This Section

OVERVIEWGETTING STARTEDSTRATEGIESTOOLSCFCD RESOURCESFACULTY RESOURCESTRAINING

Tasks

As you make plans for remote learning and teaching, focus on what tasks you are trying to accomplish.

  •     
    1. Communicating with Students
    2. Sharing Course Materials
    3. Presenting Information (Lectures, Presentations, Readings, Files)
    4. Encouraging Interaction and Engagement Among Your Students Asynchronously
    5. Collecting Assignments
    6. Assessing Student Learning

Communicating with Students

Keeping open a regular dialogue with students is vital during any changes to your class(es)—whether a planned absence on your part, or because of a crisis impacting the campus. You'll want to let students know how changes will impact their schedules, assignments, and broader course expectations. Early and frequent communication can ease student anxiety, and save you time dealing with individual questions. 

Set up online Office Hours

Let your students know that they can still meet with you regularly - and tell them how.
Consider sharing a message such as this with your students - either by email or in an Announcement
in your Moodle or Classroom course site:

Dear [Program/Course] Students, 

I'm writing to let you know that I'll be online, in front of the computer, and holding virtual office hours Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:00-4:00 pm for the duration of the semester.
If you'd like to stop by, send me an email at MyEmail@bard.edu and we can connect via Hangout (or FaceTime, or Skype—or whatever's easiest for you). I'll also be holding office hours by appointment through the end of the semester. Just send me an email (again, at MyEmail@bard.edu) if you'd like to schedule an online meeting for any day next week or after spring break.

Wishing you all a soft landing as the virtual becomes manifest--
Your professor

Keep These Principles in Mind

Tools for Course

Continuity

  • Communicate Early and Often
    • Let students know about changes or disruptions as early as possible, even if all the details aren't in place yet, and let them know when they can expect more specific information.
    • Set expectations: Let students know how you plan to communicate with them, and how often. Tell students both how often you expect them to check their email, or Moodle or Google Classroom Announcements and how quickly they can expect your response.
  • Manage Your Communications Load
    You will likely receive some individual requests for information that could be useful to all your students, so consider keeping track of frequently asked questions and sending those replies out to everyone. This way, students know they might get a group reply in a day versus a personal reply within an hour. Also, consider creating an information page in Moodle, or in a Google Doc that you share on Google Classroom, and then encourage students to check there first for answers before emailing you.

Communicating with Students Who Return to China

We recognize the challenges you face when it comes to maintaining communication with students as they return to China. A group of faculty and staff are working together to build a status update list of best-practices for communicating with our Chinese students.

To be added to this working group or to learn more, please email the CFCD by contacting Emily McLaughlin (mclaughl@bard.edu) or Éric Trudel (trudel@bard.edu).

Please remember that you will initially need to create individual communication plans with students who return to China (as you might for students who return to a domestic location where their internet access is unreliable).

Sharing Course Materials

You will likely need to provide additional course materials to support your changing plans, from updated schedules to readings that allow you to shift more instruction online. Possibly providing some new readings and related assignments may be your best bet for keeping the intellectual momentum of the course moving.

Considerations When Posting New Course Materials

Tools for Sharing

Course Materials

  • Make sure students know when new material is posted.
    If you post new materials in Bard Moodle or Google Classroom, be sure to let students know what you posted and where. You might even ask that they revisit their notification preferences in Moodle or Google Classroom, so they don’t miss important announcements from you.



     
  • Keep things mobile-friendly.
    In a crisis, many students may only have a mobile device available, so make sure you are using mobile-friendly formats, PDFs being the most common. Consider saving other files (for example, PowerPoint presentations) as PDFs, which are easier to read on phones and tablets, and keep the file size smaller. Note that Word documents, Google Docs and PDFs can help support students who require accessibility software, so privilege using those file formats. Videos take lots of bandwidth, so only require them if you are confident students will have access to them during a crisis.

Presenting Information

– Pre-record presentations or messages to students

– Host virtual sessions so you can interact with all of your students remotely

Tools for Presenting

Information

Encouraging Asynchronous Interaction & Engagement Among Your Students

Fostering communication among students is important because it allows you to reproduce any collaboration you build into your course, and maintains a sense of community that can help keep students motivated to participate. It helps if you already had some sort of student-to-student online activity (for example, Moodle Forums or Google Classroom Question) since students will be used to both the process and the tool. 

Consider these suggestions when planning activities:

Tools for Interaction

and Engagement

  • Use asynchronous tools when possible.

    Use asynchronous tools when possible.


    Having students participate in live Google Meet conversations can be useful, but scheduling can be a problem, and only a few students will actively participate (just like in your classroom). In such cases, using asynchronous tools like Moodle (Forums) or Classroom (Question) or Google Hangouts allows students to participate on their own schedules. In addition, bandwidth requirements for discussion boards are far lower than for live video tools.
  • Link to clear goals and outcomes.

    Link to clear goals and outcomes.


    Make sure there are clear purposes and outcomes for any student-to-student interaction. How does this activity help them meet course outcomes or prepare for other assignments?
  • Build in simple accountability.

    Build in simple accountability.


    Find ways to make sure students are accountable for the work they do in any online discussions or collaborations. Some professors ask for reflective statements where students detail their contributions and reflect on what they learned from the conversation.
  • Balance newness and need.

    Balance newness and need.


    As with any changed activities, you will need to balance the needs and benefits of online discussion with the additional effort such engagement will require. Learning new technologies and procedures might be counterproductive, particularly in the short term, unless there is clear benefit.
  • Provide text-based notes when you are able.

    Provide text-based notes when you are able.


    Consider sharing your lecture or other course notes with students as daily/weekly study guides, or identify students who are willing to take careful class notes and share them back with the whole class. This might be particularly useful if you have just a few students who aren't able to attend and your class is still meeting.

Collecting Assignments

Collecting assignments during a campus closure is fairly straightforward, since many instructors already collect work electronically. The main challenge during a campus disruption is whether students have access to computers, as anyone needing a campus computer lab may be unable to access necessary technologies. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

  • Require only common software.

    Require only common software.


    Students may not have access to specialty software located in on-campus computer labs. Be ready with a backup plan for such students.
  • Avoid email attachments.

    Avoid email attachments.


    It may be easy to collect assignments in small classes via email, but larger classes might swamp your email inbox. Consider using Assignments in Bard Moodle or Google Classroom instead. Balance what is simplest for students with what is easiest for you to manage.
  • State expectations, and be ready to allow extensions.

    State expectations, and be ready to allow extensions.


    In the case of a campus closure or other crisis, some students will undoubtedly have difficulties meeting deadlines. Make expectations clear, but be ready to provide more flexibility than you normally would in your class.
  • Require specific filenames.

    Require specific filenames.


    It may sound trivial, but anyone who collects papers electronically knows the pain of getting 20 files named Essay1.docx. Give your students a simple file naming convention, for example, FirstnameLastname-Essay1.docx.
  • Assess student learning.

    Assess student learning.


    With Bard Moodle or Google Classroom, you can create assignments and students can submit them using the Assignments resource. Both platforms offer opportunities to communicate feedback to students within Assignments. Additionally, you can create and administer quizzes in both platforms.
    Creating a Quiz in Google Classroom (using Google Forms)
    Creating a Quiz in Moodle and Building a Question Bank

Faculty-shared Resources

  • Supporting Lab, Performance-Based, and Maker-Based Activities
    Your peers are sharing suggestions on project or assignment modifications for disciplines that depend upon physical spaces, specific equipment, specialized software, or performance-based instruction. We are collecting them and sharing them here.

    Guides by Communities of Practice

 

This guide is based extensively on an excellent guide provided by Bowdoin College.
We are grateful to our colleagues there for sharing it with the higher ed community.

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