Virtual Teaching

This page contains suggestions and examples for messaging students, setting expectations for class, exam modifications, links to Center for Teaching and Learning resources, information on technology and free text resources, and examples of syllabus adaptations. Material on this page will be updated regularly.

Messaging Students/Setting Expectations
Teaching Tips & Ideas
Examples from Faculty
Technology

Messaging Students/Setting Expectations

Survey Your Students

Obtain necessary information so that you can plan the best approach to take for your classes. Survey students (privately) at some point to learn:

  • What time zone they are in. This information may affect your strategies for class.
  • Whether they adequately set up for working online learning using the approach that you might take and whatever technology that requires.
    • Do they have access to stable internet? Any other concerns? We may be able to help with some tech issues

What Students Say They Need

Patterns that have emerged from student comments:

  1. Students are anxious about the continuity of their courses,and hearing from you, even if only to reassure them that you are thinking carefully about a plan to best meet the learning objectives, can go a long way to reduce their anxieties.
  2. They would like clear directions on how you will be communicating with them about class.
  3. Some students worry about feeling isolated and detached if the only form of communication with an instructor or other students is through written formats such as Chat or blog functions. They are asking for at least one time every week to verbally communicate with the instructor.

Accommodating Students in Very Different Time Zones

Considerations and suggestions from faculty, updated as new ideas are shared:

If you have some students who struggle to make your designated class time:

  1. Record your class with Zoom, post the recording link to Box, students can stream the course directly from Box at a later time. Offer additional office hours at a time when those students can attend, to get some face time and answer questions.
  2. Pre-record your lecture, or post other materials – readings, videos, etc. – then use class time for discussion (the flipped classroom model). Record the discussion using Zoom, post the recording link to Box, so students can stream at a later time to hear the discussion. Offer another discussion time when those abroad can ask questions about the discussion.
  3. If your class requires participation in discussions for part of the grade, consider allowing written responses to the discussion prompts to substitute for in-class participation. This can be done using blog or chat features in Sakai, or on a class Googledoc.

Teaching Tips and Ideas

Center for Teaching and Learning Workshop and Resources

Guides and resources for successful virtual teaching

On-line Teaching Workshop Recording (3/13/20)

Workshop slides

Tips and Tricks from a Pro

Discussion with Dr. Suzanne Kern, Minerva Schools

  1. Review the learning outcomes you hope to achieve in your course and use them to guide your plan.
  2. Rethink assessments, avoiding closed book type exams that would normally be proctored in person. Consider open-book exams, oral exams, or free response writing that requires students to integrate information.
  3. Set up the norms for the new classroom, and define the new social expectations.
  4. For online class meetings, assume that most students have other distracting things running in the backgrounds on their screens. To keep their attention and focus:
    • Establish and keep direct eye contact through the camera as much as possible. Looking away for even a few seconds can lose their attention.
    • Set the expectation that students will be called on to answer questions, and that when called on, it is expected that a student will initiate a response within five seconds, if only to ask for more thinking time. Call on students frequently.
    • When calling on students, call their name first, then ask the question. Or, put a question out to the entire class, allow thinking time, then call on someone.
    • Ask that they sit upright while in class, and be ready to participate at any point.
  5. Active engagement is veryimportant. This kind of teaching can reinvigorate the growth mindset.
  6. For active learning, ask students to explain something, or write for one minute on something, then copy/paste into a document that is shared with entire class. Discuss their ideas.
  7. Tables in a document can be very helpful for organizing student responses to questions. Each student takes a cell for their response.
  8. Classes can be guided effectively using a shared google doc (shared with class), where instructors write questions to discuss or provide links to content as the class goes along.
  9. At the end of class, leave time for wrap up and make sure that they are taking away the most important points of the lesson. They can write reflections or pose a wrap-up question.
  10. Find a good microphone system.

Flipped Classroom Model for Virtual Teaching

The basic idea of a flipped classroom is that students learn content from readings or videos in advance of class, practice the ideas through problems or other prompts, then use scheduled class time to discuss material, deepen understanding of the content, and practice applying ideas through more challenging problems/prompts, often through group work.

General work flow for an online model:

  • Post lesson materials for students. These can be a pre-recorded lectures, readings, other videos, etc.
  • Provide accompanying assignments -problem sets, discussion questions, etc,based on the lesson material.
  • Keep a Zoom meeting open for any students to use at any time to discuss ideas about group or individual assignments that would benefit from that collaboration, or encourage them to use their own Zoom accounts to meet in small groups. Groups can be assigned according to time zones.
  • Regular class meeting time (through Zoom) can be used to clarify and expand on lesson content, challenge students in new ways, and to answer questions.
  • *Record and post regular class meeting discussions for those students who find it challenging to make it to regular meeting time (record the Zoom session and post the link to it on Sakai). You can also consider holding a second class session for these students at a different time.

*The flipped classroom model works well for students in different time zones as it allows for more asynchronous teaching.

Science Curriculum Links

Biology

University of Colorado Virtual Laboratory

Explore Biology Activities

QUBES Resources

Tiny Earth Digital and Online Resources

Chemistry

Multi-Dimensional Separations

Molecular Workbench

Biochemistry

BASIL Biochemistry Curriculum

Geosciences

Rock Mass Characterization

Physics

PhET Interactive Simulations

Lists Compiled by Others

Norman Herr, Professor of Science Education, CSU Northridge

Best Simulation sites

  • PhET: Interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena (University of Colorado)
  • Explore Learning: Premier collection of teaching simulations for science and math
  • Molecular Workbench: Concord Consortium resources for molecular modeling & simulations
  • Brainpop: Animated films on a variety of topics Elementary & Middle School

Simulations & Animations

Animation Directories

General Resources for Digital Science and Labs

Free Online Texts for Your Students

  • Project MUSE: This may be the best resource out there. It is a continually-updated list of publishers (including major university presses) that have made all or some of their eBooks free, generally through June 30.
  • RedShelf and VitalSource: These two companies are providing free access to a selection of textbooks based on what they can get publishers to agree to. Students and faculty can look up their textbooks to see what’s available.
  • Resource Access for Distance Learning and Research During COVID-19: This is a Google Doc that is meant for the libraries at the University of Notre Dame, but may be broadly applicable. It has sections for many eBook publishers and vendors listing what they are making available. While some vendors are making a lot of content freely available, in many cases, they are simply removing restrictions on the number of users for their licensed content. If the library has access to a book where only one user at a time could read it, now unlimited users can access it, but if the library has no access to the book in the first place, it’s still inaccessible.
  • Vendor Love in the Time of COVID-19: This is another Google Doc, with some overlapping information with the one above, but this also includes some non-library content as well (info on where one can find streaming live artistic performances, free educational software, etc.)
  • Cambridge University Press had made their 700+ textbooks free in HTML format. BUT… as of 3/24, Cambridge stopped providing free access to their textbooks because their servers were being overwhelmed. It looks like they are trying to get it back online, so you can check for updates at the link.

Alternatives to Closed-book/notes Exams

These are options suggested by remote teaching professionals and CMC faculty colleagues. It will be updated as new ideas emerge.

  1. Convert to an open-book/open notes format, posing more complex questions and problems requiring synthesis of multiple ideas, or deeper explanations. One can use Sakai to post the exam at a specific time and require its return in a few hours. Sakai time-stamps student submissions.

    If students must write answers by hand (to show calculations, diagrams, etc.), they can photograph the exam pages, or scan them using a free scanner app that converts to a PDF format or another such scanner.
  2. For an open book exam with essay and short answer questions, an option that works well is to give a selection of questions ahead of time, then select a subset for the exam. An anti-plagiarism tool will detect an answer that is not in a student’s own words, or one that is too similar to another student’s answer.

  3. Case-based questions or data interpretation questions ask students to apply concepts to specific situations and answers are not easily found on the internet. Using a bank of several variations of the problems, with different specifics, will reduce cheating with other students.

  4. Consider questions that require students to integrate information and apply it in a new context. Asking students to explain how or why reduces the chance of finding answers on the internet.

  5. Some exams may be converted to short (10-15 min) oral exams.

  6. Explore features of Sakai to assist with exams or quizzes.

    From March 21 Dean’s letter to faculty:

    The Sakai "Tests & Quizzes" tool allows tests using multiple choice items (with one or more answers defined as correct), numeric response items (including correct answers defined as falling within a range), true/false, matching, fill-in-the-blanks, calculated questions (where you define a formula and Sakai calculates new answers for every test, based on variables whose values change each time), hot spots (where students identify areas on maps, graphs, artwork, human anatomy diagrams, etc.), audio answers (you indicate the time the student has to record an answer) as well as short essays and file uploads. All, but the last two types of items are graded automatically by Sakai, and the last two are graded manually by you.

    You can set the Tests & Quizzes tool to be available for students at a certain time, with a given time limit, or you can set a time limit and allow them to access the test at any starting time of their convenience. You can make exceptions to the starting time or time limit for certain students (e.g., students with medical excuses per your policies, or DOS approved ADA accommodations).

    There are also some powerful features that limit cheating (collaboration) by creating different tests for all of your students. You can write questions for a "Question Pool" from which you can ask Sakai to randomly select "n" questions. You could use this in at least two ways. You could, for example, write a large question pool and ask Sakai to choose "n" items for each student at random. OR, you could make multiple versions of the test. For example, you could write three versions for each of three questions in your test and ask Sakai to choose one of the three at random in each case, leading to 3*3*3=27 versions of the test.

Examples from Faculty

Example syllabi are available to CMC faculty via the CMC Sakai site.