Strategies for Remote Learning and Teaching

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. 

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.

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.
  • Link to clear goals and outcomes.
  • Build in simple accountability.
  • Balance newness and need.
  • Provide text-based notes when you are able.

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.
  • Avoid email attachments.
  • State expectations, and be ready to allow extensions.
  • Require specific filenames.
  • Assess student learning.

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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