Tips From Veterans of Remote / Online Teaching

As you prepare to create and teach courses remotely this spring and summer terms, we asked some U of S instructors experienced with this type of teaching to share some quick words of wisdom based on what they learned from their own experiences. Below are their tips related to design, teaching, and assessment for remote / online. Thank you to Jorden Cummings (Psychology), Allison Fairbairn (Music), Hayley Hesseln (Agriculture and Bio Resources), and Karla Panchuk (Geology) for sharing your experiences teaching remote / online courses.

Design

• Keep it as simple as possible. Online learning difficult for many students for diverse reasons, and we cannot assume our students have access to all things technology or that they are fully comfortable using technology.
• Make it as easy as possible for students to find what they need within the course.

Teaching

• Pre-record what you need to, but there are numerous existing resources you may find useful (e.g. YouTube videos)
• Provide students with weekly checklists that highlight key items they need to look at
• Post slides with voice-over. Post the notes page as well.
• Use discussion groups to facilitate students connecting
• Ask students to introduce themselves and say something that nobody knows about them
• Ask students questions during the slide presentation/recording
  • Post those questions in a discussion forum to promote dialogue
  • Ask students to post a comment and reply to comments to encourage participation
  • Use the discussion forum with guided questions for readings
• If you use outside services, avoid ones that require your students to create an account
• Limit the number of tools that you and / or students will need to learn to use. Never assume that your students will all be tech-savvy

Assessment

• Have clear rubrics and post them so students can see how you will assess their work ahead of time
• If feasible, provide a peer review component that  allows students to receive additional feedback on their work
• If students need to print materials off to fill out and then submit, they need to be allowed to take photos of these to submit since a scanner might not be available
• Setting up the grading centre to do anything, but the basics is time consuming. Just download your grades and calculate offline
• Hayley Hesseln also makes use of reflections on learning as assessments