The College provides an array of technologies to support academic activities outside of the traditional classroom, and we invite you to explore and begin building your own course continuity plan.
1. Create a more detailed communications plan:
Once you have more details about changes in the class, communicate these details 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.
2. Check with your department:
Your department may issue more details about the situation and guidelines about their expectations for classes. Administrators may want to have many of the department's classes handled in similar ways, so check with departmental leaders before doing too much planning. Check out the MDC Online Master Course Catalog for a shell of your respective course.
3. Identify your new expectations for students & review syllabus:
You will have to reconsider some of your expectations for 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, such as illness, lacking power or internet connections, or needing to care for family members. Be ready to handle requests for extensions or accommodations equitably.
4. Determine priorities and consider realistic goals for continuing instruction:
Identify your priorities during this disruption—providing lectures, structuring new opportunities for discussion or group work, collecting assignments, etc. What do you think you can realistically accomplish during this time period? Do you think you can maintain your original syllabus and schedule? Do you hope students will keep up with the reading with some assignments to add structure and accountability? How can you keep them engaged with the course content?
5. 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. If a closure is caused by a local crisis, 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.
6. Checkout resources and seek support that will enrich your remote teaching experience
Adapted with permission from "Keep Teaching" content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License by the Trustees of Indiana University .
To support faculty utilizing an online teaching and learning environment, ACUE is offering resources and recommendations that can be immediately put to use by instructors, to benefit both faculty and their students.
These resources are divided into six key topic areas for teaching remotely:
