Teaching Remotely - Getting Started

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As we prepare for a potential transition out of the classroom to online resources, we have created this site to serve as a guide to remote teaching.

Here you will find best practices for online pedagogy along with information on technology tools to support your remote teaching. We are here to help. If you cannot easily find what you need, please contact CITL. Before you delve into the particulars consider some of “easy wins” and “practices to be avoided” listed below.

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Essential Practices

• Communicate fully and explicitly with students. Summarize all of the changes to your course on a dedicated Blackboard page.
• Should you need to revise your grading rubrics, you must provide students with updated grading details.
• If you ask students to submit coursework, you must communicate how it will be collected by specifying which online delivery option they will use (e.g. Blackboard, Google Drive, Dropbox, or email).
• Exams may not be administered in person, so you must identify an option that students can complete and submit online (if you decide to administer an exam).
• Utilize Blackboard announcements to keep your students up-to-date on any changes or modifications.
• Unless university operations are suspended, students are welcome to use WKU facilities; however, you may not require students to come to campus. If previously assigned coursework requires use of WKU facilities to be completed, please provide students with an alternative or waive that assignment (or the relevant portion of the assignment).
• Ask your students whether they need special accommodations in terms of access to technology, internet, and/or learning disability.
• Send a request through CITL to set up a phone or Zoom meeting with an instructional designer if you need assistance using Blackboard or Zoom.
• Fill out CITL’s meeting form to request a Zoom, phone, or email conversation with an instructional consultant if you have questions about your course changes.
• If many instructors and students are using the same online tools at the same time, we may have issues with internet bandwidth and speed. Given this possibility, you might consider asynchronous options in which you upload content for students to view and download when they have internet access.
• Take advantage of colleagues’ ideas, departmental practices, and share your idea.

Practices to Avoid

• Holding class via Zoom at a time and day the class does not meet.
• Extending class beyond the time the class usually meets.
• Increasing the amount of work students are expected to do.
• Asking students to do the same amount and kind of work the syllabus initially expected them to do while (a) compressing the work into a shorter time period. If you have more content than time, reflect on the student learning outcomes for your course and change your syllabus/assignments/grading rubric(s) accordingly.
• Teaching via individual consultation and tutorial (unless you were going to do that anyway).
• Adapting the course in a way that requires your GAs/TAs to work more than 20 hours a week.
• Increasing the weight of any graded assignment without explicitly and directly explaining the change to students.
• Adding a class session during finals week.
• Extending the course so that it ends after finals week.
• Rescheduling finals.

 

Acknowledgments

This content was modified from similar pages at Indiana University and University of Washington.