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Faculty Hub for Teaching and Learning Across Multiple Modalities: Remote Pedagogy and Course Design

This guide is designed to assist MDC faculty with their teaching methodology and pedagogy across multiple modalities

Graphic: Multiple Teaching Modalities with Shark Image

Designing a course and facilitating learning across multiple modalities requires a bigger toolkit than usual. Before you design your course and choose your pedagogies, review the different types of courses that MDC is offering and consider the options available for the types of courses you are teaching.

  • If you are teaching face-to-face and/or blended classes, how can you best use the classroom contact time you have with your students? What content can be delivered for homework or asynchronously to free up precious class time for interpersonal engagement? How will you use the socially distanced classroom space to facilitate learning and create the same student-to-student and student-to-faculty connections you always have?
  • If you are teaching MDC LIVE classes (i.e. virtual and synchronous), how will you plan and use your synchronous class sessions? What tools and techniques will you use to create the student-to-student and student-to-faculty interactions that are so critical for classroom community? What activities and tools can you leverage to engage your students in their learning, know that they are learning and retain them in their studies? "Semester fatigue" is real. How can you anticipate it and navigate yourself and your students through it?

Keep these questions in mind as you explore the resources available on this site and through the many CIOL trainings being offered. Sometimes the questions and even the options available to us can be overwhelming. Of course, you will create a learning experience that best matches your discipline, teaching style and students' needs; but also try to create a course, regardless of modality, that lets your students know that a caring professor is "behind the wheel" of the course and there to support them when possible.

Also know that you are not alone. Many of the offices that MDC faculty engage with and rely on to support their students in their learning are operating in a new way while teaching and learning are remote. To learn more about how to work with these academic support areas, view these recordings from the June 2020 Virtual Resource Fair.

Professional Development Resources: Remote Pedagogies and Course Design

To support instructors making the transition to remote teaching and learning, ACUE offers resources and recommendations that can be immediately put to use to benefit both faculty and their students. These resources are divided into six key topic areas for teaching remotely:

From https://acue.org/online-teaching-toolkit/

Effective teaching is inclusive.

A classroom, whether physical or virtual, is a reflection of the world in which we live. Research has shown that students from underrepresented groups often face additional challenges. By implementing inclusive teaching practices, faculty create learning environments where all students feel they belong and have the opportunity to achieve at high levels.

To support instructors in creating inclusive learning environments, ACUE is offering a set of free resources, including 10 inclusive teaching practices that can be immediately put to use to benefit both faculty and their students. These practices are tailored for online teaching but are also relevant to the physical classroom.

These 10 practices include:

  1. Ensure your course reflects a diverse society and world.
  2. Ensure course media are accessible.
  3. Ensure your syllabus sets the tone for Diverse Voices.
  4. Use inclusive language.
  5. Share your gender pronouns.
  6. Learn and use students’ preferred names.
  7. Engage students in a small-group introductions activity.
  8. Use an interest survey to connect with students.
  9. Offer inclusive office hours.
  10. Set expectations for valuing diverse viewpoints.

Source: ACUE Inclusive Teaching Practices Toolkit

Quality Matters Logo

The Quality Matters Remote Instruction Checklist is a tiered list of considerations, tips, and actionable strategies to enact during an institutional move to temporary remote instruction of classroom-based courses. It is presented in three phases, according to prioritized needs:

1.     Start Here: Preparing for Success

2.     Next Steps: Guiding Students and Their Learning

3.     Longer Term Considerations: Teaching Effectively in a New Environment

The power of educational development lies in a single thread—one specific message—that runs through our entire enterprise. It is simply this:

You are not alone.

Pedagogies of Care: Open Resources for Student-Centered & Adaptive Strategies in the New Higher-Ed Landscape offers practical and engaging advice about what "next" should look like across higher education, from sixteen current and forthcoming authors in the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education book series from West Virginia University Press.
 

Collection editors Victoria Mondelli and Thomas J. Tobin note that the resources in Pedagogies of Care take many forms: "Our contributors created videos, audio podcasts, interviews, infographics, and articles. All are underpinned by a student-centered, evidence-based ethos."

We welcome you to use these resources in your own teaching preparations, in educational development with your faculty colleagues, in discussion groups—however they can be useful for you. Our aim is to help facilitate successful teaching and learning in a time of disruption and hardship.

Much about the future is uncertain, so let’s make ready: rally toward radical hope, evolve our practices, and meet new possibilities for growth and well-being.

Together.

Source: Pedagogies of Care: Complete Collection




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By Michelle D. Miller, Ph.D.

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Webinar hosted by Harvard Business Publishing Education

Webinar link

Related Resource: Teaching Cases Online

“Help! I’m Moving My Course Online!”– Practical Advice for New Online Instructors

Webinar hosted by Magna Online Seminars

Webinar Link

If prompted for a password, use advice238.

Faculty Playbook Image

 

Developed by: the Online Learning Consortium, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and Every Learner Everywhere, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Source: Every Learner Everywhere

Released: May 2020

Delivering High-Quality Instruction Online in Response to COVID-19 is a faculty-focused playbook intended to improve course design, teaching, and learning in online environments. With special attention to the needs of instructors teaching online for the first time, the guide offers strategies for getting started and improving over time.

The playbook provides a path for continuous improvement of instruction along a quality-oriented continuum.

  • Design guides immediate and basic needs for moving a course online. It is useful for translation of face-to-face or blended courses for fully-online delivery.‍
  • Enhance provides options to strengthen the student learning experience. It is useful for improving face-to-face course elements that do not translate easily to online modalities.
  • Optimize offers ideas and resources for online teaching that aligns with high-quality, evidence-based instructional practices. It is useful for continuous improvement of the online learning experience and student outcomes.

In addition, Delivering High-Quality Instruction Online in Response to COVID-19 addresses online teaching and learning in both emergency and non-emergency contexts with special attention to course design, course construction, course management, course evaluation, and strategies for continuous improvement.

Upcoming OpenStax webinar topics include "Facilitating Peer Discussions" and "Making the Most of Remote Science Labs." Click here for details.

Last updated: August 24, 2020