Flexibility in Teaching Modalities

When you realize you have to change the delivery of course content for a subset of your students, consider the following right away:

• Communicate with your students right away: Even if you don’t have a plan in place yet, communicate with your students as soon as possible, informing them that changes are coming and what your expectations are for checking email or using Brightspace in order to provide them with more details as soon as possible.
• Review your course schedule to determine priorities: Identify your priorities during the disruption—providing lectures, structuring new opportunities for discussion or group work, collecting assignments, etc. What activities are better rescheduled, and what can or must be done online? Give yourself a little flexibility in that schedule, just in case the situation takes longer to resolve than you think.
• Review your syllabus for points that must change: What will have to temporarily change in your syllabus (policies, due dates, assignments, etc.)? Since students will also be thrown off by the changes, they will appreciate details whenever you can provide them.
• Pick tools and approaches familiar to you and your students: Try to rely on tools and workflows that are familiar to you and your students and roll out new tools only when absolutely necessary. Because the transition might be quick, it may be already taxing everyone’s mental and emotional energy; introducing a lot of new tools and approaches may leave even less energy and attention for learning.
• Identify your new expectations for students: You will have to reconsider some of your expectations for your affected students, including participation, communication, and deadlines. As you think through those changes, keep in mind the impact this situation may have on students’ ability to meet those expectations, including illness, and stress. Be ready to handle requests for extensions or accommodations equitably.
• Create a more detailed communications plan: Once you have more details about changes in the class, communicate them to students, along with more information about how they can contact you (email, online office hours, etc.). A useful communication plan also lets students know how soon they can expect a reply. They will have many questions, so try to figure out how you want to manage that.

For more information and suggestions, you can contact the Faculty Center by submitting a request through the IT Service Portal below.

Overview

Keeping in touch with students is vital during any changes to your class(es). You’ll want to let students know about changes in schedules, assignments, procedures, and broader course expectations. Early and frequent communication can ease students’ anxiety and save you from having to deal with individual questions.

Principles to keep in mind when communicating with students:

• Communicate early and often: Let students know about changes 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 and how quickly they can expect a response from you. Let them know, too, if you are using Brightspace as part of your communication, since they may need to update their notification preferences or change their habits(details in the next section).
• 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 within a day rather than a personal reply within an hour. Also, consider creating an information page in Brightspace and encouraging students to check there first for answers before emailing you.

Tools for communicating with students

• Email in Brightspace: Email can be an effective tool for communicating with individuals and groups. The easiest way to send an email to your students is to initiate the message using the Classlist tool in Brightspace. By starting from within Brightspace, you don’t need to keep track of email addresses, and you can choose to contact individuals, groups, or the entire class. You can access this tool by doing the following: Go to your course in Brightspace > Click on Course Tools > Click on Classlist.

• Email through Outlook: If you prefer to directly use Outlook for email, you can look up your students’ email addresses in Active Directory within any Microsoft Outlook web, mobile, or desktop app.

• Brightspace Announcements: The Brightspace Announcements tool is useful for posting information that you want to share with the entire class. Whether students receive email notifications for new announcements depends on their Brightspace notification settings; however, if they leave their settings at the default, they will always receive an email to their SUNY Oneonta email address.

• Microsoft Teams for live audio or videoconferencing: On occasion, you may need to communicate with an individual or a group of students in real time. The videoconferencing tool Microsoft Teams, which is part of Microsoft Office 365, is available for every course, and you can run it on a tablet, smartphone, or computer. You’ll need a headset or a microphone and speakers for audio and a webcam for video.

For more information and suggestions, you can contact the Faculty Center by submitting a request through the IT Service Portal below.

Overview

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. In a pinch, providing new readings and related assignments may be your best bet for keeping the course’s intellectual momentum moving. In Brightspace, the best tool for posting content is the Create a File (webpage) option. You can log in to Brightspace and review the SUNY DLE Brightspace Fundamentals Asynchronous Modules for more information.

Considerations when posting new course materials:

• Make sure students know when new material is posted: If you post new materials in Brightspace, be sure to let students know what you posted and where. You might even ask them to change their Brightspace notification preferences to be alerted when new materials are posted. Refer them to How do I set my Brightspace notification preferences as a student?
• Keep things phone-friendly: Many students may only have a phone, so use mobile-friendly formats, with 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 small. Videos take lots of bandwidth, so only require them if you are confident students will have access to them.

For more information and suggestions, you can contact the Faculty Center by submitting a request through the IT Service Portal below.

Overview

Depending on your course, you may need to deliver some lectures to keep the course moving along. For any of these, you will need the following equipment:

• Device with good internet connection, preferably Wi-Fi (laptop, tablet, smartphone)
• Headphones or earbuds (optional)
• Microphone (if possible; a separate microphone can be better than your device’s built-in mic)
• Web camera (optional, preferred for face-to-face contact)

Be aware, though, that a 45-minute live lecture sprinkled with questions and activities can become grueling when delivered online without intellectual breaks. Here are a few suggestions to improve online lectures:

Principles to keep in mind when creating Online Lectures

• Record in small chunks: Even the best online speakers keep it brief; think of the brevity of TED talks. We learn better with breaks to process and apply new information. To aid student learning, record any lectures in shorter (5-10 minute) chunks, and intersperse them with small activities that give students opportunities to process the new knowledge, make connections to other concepts, apply an idea, or make some notes in response to prompts. Smaller chunks also lead to smaller files, especially when using voice-over PowerPoint presentations.
• Be flexible with live video: Lecturing live with Microsoft Teams best approximates a classroom setting, since students can ask questions. However, a crisis might mean some students won’t have access to fast internet connections, and others may have their schedules disrupted. So, record any live classroom session, and be flexible about how students can attend and participate.
• It’s not just about content: Lectures can mean more than just providing course content; they also establish a sense of normalcy and a personal connection. In online courses, we talk about the importance of “instructor presence”, and that’s just as true during short-term online stints. So, consider ways that you can use lectures to make students feel connected and cared about: acknowledgment of current challenges, praise for good work, and reminders about the class being a community. This effective work can help their learning during a difficult time.

Tools for delivering or recording lectures

• Microsoft Teams / Screencast-o-matic: We have access to various tools for video conferencing or recording video lectures.
  • SUNY Oneonta has access to a tool called Microsoft Teams, which is part of Microsoft Office 365. Here is how you can  record your meeting in Microsoft Teams.
  • Screencast-o-matic records your screen and is free for videos less than 15 minutes.

• PowerPoint for recording lectures: If the content of your lecture is exclusively in PowerPoint, and you would like to be able to add, delete, or edit slides after your initial recording—or perhaps change the voice-over for one slide—you may want to consider the Recording tab . This option requires the most recent version of PowerPoint (Office 365), unless you already have the now-retired Office Mix installed on your computer.
  
  This option is best for longer recordings or for ones that you would like to be able to refine in the future. Unlike Screencast-o-matic recordings, PowerPoint recordings can be changed in small ways, like editing a typo in a slide, without losing access to the audio that you previously made. This is also helpful if you decide to delete selected content or add slides with new audio in the future.

• Posting Videos to Brightspace: Video files are large and can quickly fill up all the space in a Brightspace course. The best practice is to post your video to either YouTube or Microsoft Stream. You can then either link to the video from Brightspace or embed it in the course. Here are videos to help with this process:
  • How to upload a video to YouTube
  • How to upload a video to Microsoft Stream
  • How to embed a video in Blackboard

For more information and suggestions, you can contact the Faculty Center by submitting a request through the IT Service Portal below.

Overview

Considerations as you plan to address lab activities:

• Provide raw data for analysis: In cases where the lab includes both data collection and analysis, consider showing how the data can be collected, then provide raw data sets for students to analyze. This approach is not as comprehensive as having students collect and analyze their own data, but it might keep them engaged with parts of the lab experience.
• Explore alternate software access: Some labs require access to specialized software that students cannot install on their own computers. The IT Service Desk might be able to help set up alternative computer labs with the software your students need.
• Increase interaction in other ways: Sometimes labs are more about having time for direct student interaction, so consider other ways to replicate that level of contact if only your lab is out of commission.
• Take part in the lab online: Many lab activities require students to become familiar with specific procedures, and only hands-on practice will do. In such cases, consider whether there are other parts of the lab experience you could take online (for example, video demonstrations of techniques, online simulations, data analysis, or other pre- or post-lab work), and save the physical practice parts of the labs until access is restored.
• Investigate virtual labs: Online resources and tools can help replicate the experience of some labs (for example, virtual dissections, night sky apps, video demonstrations, and simulations). Those vary widely by discipline, but check with your textbook publisher or sites such as Merlot for materials that might help replace parts of your lab during an emergency.

For more information and suggestions, you can contact the Faculty Center by submitting a request through the IT Service Portal below.

Overview

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 and learn. It helps if you already have some sort of student-to-student online activity (for example, Brightspace Discussions) since students will be used to both the process and the tool.

Consider these suggestions when planning activities:

• Use asynchronous tools when possible: Having students participate in live Collaborate or Microsoft Teams 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 Brightspace Discussions 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: 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: Find ways to ensure students are accountable for their work in online discussions and collaborations. Assigning points for online discussion posts can be tedious, so some instructors ask for reflective statements where students detail their contributions and reflect on what they learned from the conversation.
• Balance newness and need: As with any new activity, you will need to balance the benefits and needs of online collaboration with the additional effort it will require of everyone else. Learning new technologies and procedures might be counterproductive, particularly in the short term, unless there is a clear benefit.

Tools for fostering collaboration

• Brightspace Discussions: If you haven’t used the Discussions tool in Brightspace, it’s not difficult to begin. Once you have a topic, you can create a discussion and invite students to respond. Settings allow you to use threaded replies (helping students track their replies to each other’s posts), make the discussion a graded assignment, and assign the discussion to everyone or to groups. One particularly helpful option is to require students to post before seeing replies, which requires students to refine their own thoughts before seeing others’. Consider allowing students to “like” posts to encourage them to read posts and provide quick feedback to each other, in addition to posting replies.
  
  You can assign discussion grades in a forum or thread. You can assign grades based on student participation, on the quality of their posts, or a combination of the two. Each student’s posts (including original posts and replies to others) are displayed for easy review.

For more information and suggestions, you can contact the Faculty Center by submitting a request through the IT Service Portal below.

Overview

Student submissions can be collected through Brightspace using the Assignments tool. This allows students to have one place to submit their work and one place for instructors to grade that work. Here are directions for using Assignments in Brightspace if you are interested.

Consider these suggestions when planning activities:

• State expectations, but be ready to allow extensions: Make expectations clear, but be ready to provide more flexibility than you normally would in your class.
• Avoid emailed attachments: It may be easy to collect assignments in small classes via email, but larger classes might swamp your email inbox. Consider using the tools below instead. Balance what is simplest for students with what is easiest for you to manage.
• 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.
• Brightspace assignments: With the Assignments tool in Brightspace, you can create coursework and manage the grades and feedback for each student separately. You can create assignments in content areas, learning modules, lesson plans, and folders.

For more information and suggestions, you can contact the Faculty Center by submitting a request through the IT Service Portal below.

Overview

It is fairly easy to give short quizzes to hold students accountable or to do spot checks on their learning, and this might be ideal for keeping students on track during class disruptions. Providing high-stakes tests online can be challenging; however, it places extra stress on students and makes ensuring test integrity difficult. If you know there is a date for resuming on-campus classes, consider delaying exams until you return, if possible.

Consider these suggestions when planning activities:

• Embrace short quizzes: Short quizzes can be a great way to keep students engaged with course concepts, particularly if they are interspersed with small chunks of video lectures. Consider using very-low-stakes quizzes to give students practice at applying concepts—just enough points to hold them accountable, but not so many that the activity becomes all about points.
• Move beyond simple facts: It is good to reinforce concepts through practice on a quiz, but generally, it is best to move beyond factual answers that students can quickly look up. Instead, write questions that prompt students to apply concepts to new scenarios, or ask them to identify the best of multiple correct answers.
• Check for publishers’ test banks: Look to see if your textbook publisher has question banks that can be loaded into Brightspace. The Faculty Center can provide further assistance with this. Even if you don’t use these questions for your exams, they can be useful for simple quizzes. Some textbooks also have their own online quizzing tools that can help keep students engaged with the material.
• Update expectations for projects: Changes may limit students’ access to resources they need to complete papers or other projects, and team projects may be harmed by a team’s inability to meet. Be ready to change assignment expectations based on the limitations a change in course delivery may impose. Possible options include allowing individual rather than group projects, having groups record presentations with Screencast-O-Matic, or adjusting the types of resources needed for research papers.
• Consider alternate exams: Delivering a secure exam online can be difficult without a good deal of preparation and support, so consider giving open-book exams or other types of exams. They can be harder to grade, but you have fewer worries about test security.

Tools for online student assessment

• Brightspace Tests: The Test tool in Brightspace, despite its name, can be used for both low-stakes assessments (e.g., quizzes, practice quizzes, or surveys) and high-stakes assessments (e.g., tests or exams). Its strength lies in Brightspace’s ability to automatically grade many question types, including multiple-choice, true/false, matching, numeric, and fill-in-the-blank. You can also include short-answer and essay questions, and grade those manually using the Ready-to-Grade area. The quiz questions themselves can easily incorporate images, in addition to text.
  
  Other useful test options include the ability to scramble answers for multiple-choice questions, allowing multiple attempts (and keeping only the high score, or average score of all attempts), and showing one question at a time. Brightspace can also randomize questions for you, so each students doesn’t access exactly the same test.

For more information and suggestions, you can contact the Faculty Center by submitting a request through the IT Service Portal below.

Overview

In response to the current situation, the TLTC has prepared a simplified version of OSCQR that combines many requirements. Our hope is to provide a streamlined checklist for our faculty to use as they prepare for the upcoming semester. Much of the TLTC’s professional development this summer will use this simplified checklist as a framing device.

The Open SUNY Course Quality Rubric (OSCQR) was created by SUNY and the Online Learning Consortium as a set of best practices for building, updating, or maintaining online and hybrid courses. The OSCQR process is designed so that an instructor can self-assess their course, review it with another content expert, or work with an instructional designer. The idea is that by reviewing a list of best practices, an instructor can get ideas for updating their course.

SUNY Oneonta adopted OSCQR as its official course quality rubric in the Distance Learning Policy that was endorsed by the University Senate and adopted by the university.

We hope that as you build your courses, a checklist will be helpful. Some of the points on the checklist are simple and mechanical, and some are deeper and explore how a course is designed and how students will be evaluated.

Full OSCQR (50 criteria, used for Distance Education Courses and will be used for faculty that want to teach fully online when we return to F2F instruction)

For more information and suggestions, you can contact the Faculty Center by submitting a request through the IT Service Portal below.