Checklist for Remote Teaching:
Review your Syllabus.
Once you understand your students’ needs and circumstances, what does that mean for your course design/delivery? Can you Be Flexible?
While it is certainly the case that in extraordinary circumstances, it may be all you can do to simply attempt to duplicate your face to face teaching, activities, assessments. It is completely understandable to just try to get to the end of the day, week, term, doing the best you can, using whatever tools/approaches you have, can get, or feel most comfortable with.
You (and your students) may find yourselves in unfamiliar digital environments where you have little/no experiences, and where survival is paramount. That is the nature of an emergency. It is not by choice – the situation is is not optimal, ideal, or well planned.
However, you may not be able to duplicate certain face to face events, exposure, content, instructional approaches, activities, experiences. What will you do? If you are able/willing, and your circumstances permit, you may want to, or be forced to consider alternatives and options. For example, how will you teach the soldering/bezel-setting unit in your jewelry design course, when your students are not with you in the studio?
Additionally, once you understand your students’ circumstances, you will have more information, and may be better able to consider how flexible you can be/need to be in your approaches to instruction to accommodate student circumstances. For example, are your deadlines flexible? Are lectures/zoom sessions recorded for viewing by students that can’t make it? Can you provide options/alternatives for students?
Start with the End in Mind
If it makes sense for you and your situation, a little backwards design thinking can provide a framework to help you consider the options and alternatives for reconceptualizing aspects of your your course design and instruction for a remote teaching and leaning experience, rather than attempting to duplicate your face to face activities. Quite a bit is known in traditional online instructional design about how to best Design Effective & Accessible Online Activities, Interaction & Assessments.
Example: Course Information Documents
Resources:
Things to consider:
1. How will you assess learning and provide feedback and grades?
- What assessments need to be reconceptualized for remote delivery?
- How will you collect assignments?
- How will you conduct tests/quizzes?
- How will you ensure academic honesty/integrity?
- How will students make individual or group presentations of their work or projects?
- How will any changes affect your due dates/times?
- How will students give you suggestions or feedback so you can improve the course design/facilitation?
- How will you end the course?
2. How will you facilitate interaction with and between students?
- How will create a sense of class community in your course?
- How will you welcome your students?
- How will you break the ice to start the course?
- How will you communicate with your students?
- How will you make course announcements?
- How will you conduct office hours?
- What assignments/activities need to be reconceptualized for remote delivery?
- How will students engage with you, each other and the course content?
- Will you have access to a TA? How will you work with your TA?
- How will students make their thinking and learning visible to you so you can guide, diagnose misperceptions, offer corrective feedback, and deepen their thinking and understanding?
- How will you design online discussions/interactions to deepen learning?
- How will students work in groups or engage in collaborations?
- How will students conduct lab experiments? Access special tools or equipment? Conduct research? Observations? Studio activities?
- How will students make presentations? Individually or in groups?
- How does this affect the course schedule and due dates/times?
3. How will you best present course content?
- Consider what changes may be necessary?
- How will you distribute handouts, readings, materials?
- How will you deliver your lectures? (Via text mini-lecture? Via live webinar – zoom/collaborate? Via recorded video or audio podcast? Via voice annotated slide presentation?)
- What tools/skills do you have/need?
- How much time do you have/need?
- What tools/skills do you have/need?
- What discipline-specific needs or activities do you have? Large-lecture? Lab? Seminar? Colloquium/Discussion? Studio? Experiential? Hand’s on /practice? Directed Independent/individual Study? Tutorial? Practicum?
- How will you ensure accessibility of your online materials?