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Updates

This week’s  combination of rising COVID positivity rates on campus and off, combined with travel delays in the US and abroad, has meant that most faculty have had to accommodate students who have not been able to attend classes. How best to do this? While there are no clear-cut answers, because of the variability of teaching scenarios, here are some strategies to consider.

Please note: Different challenges exist for different courses, class populations, and classrooms, so there is not one solution that will work for everyone. Furthermore, many of the potential solutions to accommodate students or faculty having to miss class are not possible or practical in many courses and classrooms.

  • Recording in class: Shared recordings of class components: Instructors are using web cameras to capture their in-person lectures, class discussions, whiteboards/chalk boards, and other classroom activities. These recordings are then shared with all students via Canvas, where students who could not attend class can review them. To learn more about recording your class, see this article. To optimize a good audio capture, we recommend using your laptop’s or the classroom computer’s built-in microphone. If this doesn’t produce a crisp audio recording, contact Classroom Technologies, to see whether a better audio solution can be worked out for your specific classroom. To do so, fill out this service request form.
  • Asynchronous content delivery: Learn more about sharing content via Canvas and other tools here on this site. Discussion boards and peer review activities on Canvas can engage absent students in class content and with their classmates. This is not a replacement but perhaps a reasonable substitute for engaging students in varying circumstances.
  • Synchronous connection:
    • Simultaneous Zoom session accompanying in-person class session: This approach requires the use of one or more web cameras in the classroom to capture audio and video for remote students to follow along in real time. Some are using existing classroom technology, while others are equipping classrooms with their own/departmental cameras, or buying or renting an OWL camera from the computer store. Instructors using this approach recommend establishing a recurring Zoom room for class meetings where absent students can consistently find the live class. Challenges include remote students being able to participate actively or be seen/heard by in-person students during class discussions and activities.
    • Synchronous Zoom session for all: Some classes have moved to remote delivery for all synchronous class time. Please see information from the Dean of Faculty regarding policies and practice for this decision.
  • Last but not least: consider adding some high-quality engagement opportunities that occur in Canvas and elsewhere, for students that cannot be physically present in the classroom. Find ways for students to contribute asynchronously — google docs, discussions, hypothesis annotations, voicethreads, etc. Many of these options are detailed and described here on the teachremote.dartmouth.edu site. Another good idea is to pair up remote students with in-class students in a buddy system, to help ensure that remote students don’t get left behind, and to keep building this term’s class community beyond the classroom walls. 
    • Office hours or meetings with absent students: Instructors are meeting students over Zoom to discuss what they missed in class. Setting a regular time and inviting students to meet with you in groups can save time rather than meeting with each student individually.
    • Group work among remote students: Classes that involve in-class group work can form ad hoc groups of remote students to work together over Zoom during a single class period while their in-person peers work in groups in the classroom.
    • Group work with 1-2 remote members: Students working in groups during class time might connect with a remote member using their own group Zoom room during one or multiple class periods.

On Thursday July 2, 2020, DCAL hosted a panel discussion about collaborative projects in remote classrooms. For a copy of the transcript, see below.

After the panel there was a Q&A with the panelist and then attendees went into breakout rooms for deeper discussion. The following are some suggestions from instructors for collaborative projects based on those conversations

Group Division

  • Buddy first year students with upperclass students.
  • Divide students into groups based on time zones so that they are at the same place in their day when they get together.

Visiting Students in Breakout Rooms

  • Give them the power to get rid of you and keep working.
  • Announce your presence since it’s not always clear on Zoom when someone enters a room.

Synchronous Class Time

  • Flip your class so that students watch the lecture on their own time and class time can be spent on activities.
  • Suggest students use the same virtual background so that they have a sense of place. There may also be a disparity in locations that students log on from so the same background could provide the parity of a classroom.
  • Give time for reflection in a session and have students black out their screens to write and reflect.

Read more tips and reflections from Dartmouth faculty or share your own on the Teach Remotely site.

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Classes start September 14th.

Between July 6th and then, there are 10 weeks. Here are some suggestions for how to take a little time each week to get your course ready to launch. Feel free to modify the timeline based on your availability and needs.

Week 1

  1. Do some reading. See the summer reading suggestions from DCAL/LDT.
  2. Take a look at the Remote Readiness Checklist on teachremote.dartmouth.edu.
  3. Talk with your department chair about the Spring student experience survey results.

Week 2

  1. Review your learning objectives and syllabus. Discuss with your Academic Continuity team to determine how you might approach the redesign most effectively and ensure that you have additional resources if you need them. Is there anything from your previous offering of the course that needs to be changed for the new environment?
  2. Develop a list of the technology you’d like to use, and determine where you need additional training.
  3. Create a schedule for yourself based on your own availability and needs that includes major milestones and minor to-do items as you see them.

Week 3

  1. Consider how students will engage with you and with each other. Draft ideas for office hours, study groups, and other engagement strategies for the remote environment. Students have indicated that meaningful connection to you and to each other is critical for their learning.
  2. Craft outlines for each week/module of your course including the purpose of the week/module, learning objectives, lectures, readings, other media, and a general idea of assignments.

Week 4

  1. Sketch an outline of each lecture you would like to record or deliver via Zoom.
  2. Identify resources you may need for development of these lectures, such as media, images, scripts, editing technology, etc.
  3. Refine your plan for student assignments, ensuring that you are providing multiple modes for students to demonstrate their knowledge, and that there is a chance for students to receive formative feedback as they progress through the course.

Week 5

  1. How are you doing with the schedule you developed for these 10 weeks? Check in with yourself and/or your Academic Continuity team.
  2. Design your Canvas site to match your course outline. Be sure to include all of your plans for engagement. 
  3. Review the Remote Readiness Checklist on teachremote.dartmouth.edu. 

Week 6

  1. Review each assignment to ensure that directions are clear for students and fit well into the plan you’ve developed for your course.
  2. Review your readings for accessibility.
  3. Finalize your syllabus. 
  4. Begin recording any lectures you’d like students to view asynchronously.

Week 7

  1. Will you be working with TA’s, UTA’s, LF’s or other teaching helpers? Time to bring them into the plan and get some feedback on your plan.
  2. Finish preparing your Canvas site, get feedback from a colleague if possible. Check that anything you copied from previous terms, like teaching methods and course policies, are revised with remote teaching in mind. 
  3. Continue recording if needed.

Week 8

  1. Finalize your Canvas site, ensuring that it’s clear to students how they should interact with your content, with you, and with each other.
  2. Continue recording if needed.
  3. Craft drafts of rubrics for assessing student work.
  4. Publish your Canvas site.

Week 9/10

  1. Send a survey to get to know your enrolled students.
  2. Review all the above steps for anything you’ve missed.
  3. Take a step back and appreciate all the work you've put in. Breathe. It's going to be great.

Maybe you're not heading to the beach or building your usual reading list, but instead trying to focus your reading on preparing for the upcoming term. Here are two reading list suggestions from DCAL and Learning Design and Technology (ITC) teams, depending on where you're starting.

Option 1: You taught in Spring term and survived, or are teaching now in Summer and getting through! You’re on the schedule to teach again in Fall, maybe a new preparation or perhaps re-offering a course you have some experience offering remotely. 

  1. Turns out you can build community in a Zoom classroom by Rachel Toor
  2. We are not in the same boat by Emery D. Haley
  3. Three strategies for better online discussions by Michael B. Sherry
  4. How to recover the joy of teaching after an online pivot by Flower Darby

Option 2: You are new to remote teaching. Feel free to read any of the articles from the other section too!

  1. Dartmouth Teaching Remotely Getting Started Guide by DCAL and ITC
  2. 5 ways to connect with online students by Flower Darby
  3. Effective educational videos by Cynthia J. Brame 
  4. Pandemic Teaching Prescriptions by Regan A. R. Gurung

And no matter what, review the Remote Readiness Checklist!

Beginning on Thursday, June 18, all newly scheduled Zoom meetings and webinars at Dartmouth will have a password applied by default and that password will be embedded in the meeting link. This new security precaution will be forced by Zoom later this summer so we are applying it early to preclude disruption during the term.

If you share a meeting link - for example, via Canvas for classes or by email - your participants will experience no change. When they click the link they will enter the Zoom meeting because the password is embedded. No new steps.

Later this summer Zoom will also be requiring meeting passwords for previously scheduled recurring meetings that do not already have them. We will advise as we learn more about the timing and impact of this change.

Given that Zoom will likely be implementing changes in the middle of term, if your course or regular business relies on previously scheduled recurring meetings (but not personal meeting rooms), please consider adding a password now so that you won't need to worry about responding to this later. To learn how, please visit dartgo.org/zoom-updates.

Good afternoon,

We've been continually updating the Teaching Remotely website. Here are some of the most recent changes and highlights in case you missed them:

Blog posts:

Have a great evening!

Adam Nemeroff, Learning Designer

The Dartmouth College Library published this resource on Sharing Scholarship for Remote Teaching and Learning. This resource goes into greater detail clarifying information about intellectual property at Dartmouth and beyond, copyright in the context of COVID-19, things to know about sharing work with others, and using the work of others in your teaching and research.

They also emphasize that the Scholarly Communication, Copyright and Publishing program at Dartmouth Library is always here to help faculty, students, and staff to share their scholarship with the wider community and to use the work of others in their teaching and research.

For further help or consultation on your individual situation, please contact: dartmouthdigitalcommons@groups.dartmouth.edu

The lack of face to face connection that comes with remote teaching can be felt by instructors and students alike. Last week as the Spring term began, we heard many faculty members talk  about how much they miss eye contact and the opportunity for hallway conversations. We’ve compiled suggestions on how to check in with your students during remote teaching and learning this Spring.

...continue reading "5 Ideas for Checking In with Your Students"