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Education Dive
Finding the 'sweet spot': 4 tips for moving classes online quickly
To help limit the spread of the coronavirus, colleges are taking
instruction remote. But experts say careful planning and managing
expectations is key.
Hallie Busta
March 13, 2020
Colleges and universities are canceling class meetings to help stem the
spread of the novel coronavirus. But taking instruction online can be a
tough switch to flip — particularly for courses that haven't
historically included a distance-learning component.
"We're all going to have to be a little bit flexible in situations like
this," said Katie Linder, executive director for program development at
Kansas State University's Global Campus, in an interview with Education
Dive. "We want to make sure our students are having really quality
learning experiences but also understanding that can look different
based on what the situation is."
On Tuesday, her team launched an online forum for educators worldwide
to ask questions and share ideas about facilitating instruction
remotely. It's one of several resources developed by the academic
community to help sharpen institutions' response to the coronavirus's
impact on instruction.
U.S. institutions had a preview of what to expect as the novel
coronavirus and the respiratory illness it causes, COVID-19, spread
across China and other countries in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Momentum picked up in the U.S. in the last week, as more people were
tested for the virus. As of Friday afternoon, there were more than
1,800 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and 38 related deaths,
according to data gathered by The New York Times.
College officials here have said the situation is largely unprecedented, though some have experience to draw from.
In 2018, Pepperdine University, in California, closed two of its
campuses for a few weeks due to nearby wildfires. Quickly shifting
coursework online was "a big learning curve" that required faculty and
staff to get up to speed quickly on using remote instruction tools,
Christopher Heard, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and a
professor at the university's Seaver College, told Education Dive.
"One of the things we learned was that students are pretty resilient
and that faculty are pretty resourceful and that with the appropriate
support … we can help professors make these transitions pretty
quickly," he said.
Heard and Linder encourage colleges to stick to their learning outcomes
but to be flexible and creative in how they achieve them.
That can be tricky for courses that lean heavily on experiential
learning, such as science labs or co-ops and practicums. But it's not
impossible, they and other experts told Education Dive.
"What are the things you want them to learn how to do, and how do you
want them to work? And then work backwards from there, to how you can
do that when you are teaching remotely," said Beth Kalikoff, director
of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Washington.
Below, we've gathered their tips for colleges going online in a hurry.
Bottom of Form
Have a ramp-up period
Several institutions have opted to close for a few days or extend
spring break to give faculty time to prepare to teach courses remotely.
This also gives students whose residence halls have closed a chance to
relocate and get settled.
"To the extent that schools can build a longer rampway for faculty to
plan, that's going to be in their best interest," said Kaitlyn Maloney,
a senior director at consulting firm EAB whose focus includes strategic
planning, in an interview.
The University of Indiana Bloomington is holding hour-long webinars
about general concepts and tools for remote instruction to help prepare
faculty to teach remotely for two weeks when students return from
spring break later this month. One-on-one follow-up sessions will help
instructors set up these tools, Greg Siering, director of the
university's Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning, told
Education Dive.
Giving faculty time to plan can also help manage expectations.
"We want to help them find that sweet spot where they're not diving in
too deep and causing grief for both themselves and their students in
these first two weeks, but they're ramping things up enough" so they
are able to continue should they have to teach remotely for a longer
period of time, Siering said.
That includes helping instructors understand what regular and
substantive interaction, which is a federal requirement of most
faculty, means when it is not done synchronously, as it is with
real-time lectures. There's also a difference between going online and
going remote, Kansas State's Linder notes.
"There are actually some really low-tech options that could work very
well for some of your students," she said, citing email and general use
of the learning management system.
Stick to the outcomes, but be creative
A combination of video lectures, discussion board posts and email
feedback may suffice for typical lecture classes. But what if the
course relies heavily on classroom-based experiences, such as science
labs, music performance or even language learning?
Simple video tools could help. An instructor could share a video of
themselves conducting an experiment and then give the resulting data to
students to work with. In a performance-based class, students and
faculty could use videos to share work and feedback.
Virtual labs available through platforms such as Merlot and Harvard
University's LabXchange can supplement online instruction. And some
MOOC providers said they will make their courses more widely available.
Reframing the learning experience may be necessary, even for typical
assignments. A research paper based on data students collect may not be
practical if they aren't on campus. Instead, instructors could ask
students to write a research proposal, which would force students to
think through the methodology and what could go wrong, said Christina
Smith, assistant director for undergraduate instructional development
at Brown University's Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, in an
interview.
"It all comes to this idea of what are those outcomes and how can you
be creative in your assignments and assessment in achieving those,"
Smith said.
In certain cases, it may make more sense to reschedule the active
learning component until later in the semester, or even entirely,
experts said.
Some are taking that option. Northwestern University's journalism
school is canceling students' internship placements at media
organizations for the spring quarter. According to its student
newspaper, the school is waiving the related requirement for
professional experience for affected students.
Make sure students can get to class
As schools plan, it's important to consider how students could access
lectures and assignments "so that the quick pivot to remote instruction
doesn't hamper student success goals or create inequitable situations
and learning outcomes," Maloney said.
Even seemingly straightforward options like video lectures will need to
account for students who can't participate live, either because they
are in a different time zone or because they lack sufficient internet
access away from campus. That could include recording the lecture so
it's available later. Instructors should also be aware of accessibility
requirements, such as ensuring captions for videos they create or
stream are available and accurate and that other digital materials are
compatible with screen readers.
Because most students are leaving campus and will be spread across time
zones, Pepperdine is asking its instructors to emphasize asynchronous
experiences, which don't require students to tune into programming at a
scheduled time. To help students plan, any synchronous activities
should occur during the preset class time, Heard said.
"One of the important points here is about equity. We know that
students already may be going into inequitable situations with respect
to bandwidth and access to Wi-Fi and the internet and so forth," he
said. "We don't want to compound that by splitting the experience
between synchronous and asynchronous."
Some schools are rethinking remote instruction entirely. At Berea
College, in Kentucky, many students live in rural areas that tend to
have poor internet access. In response to the coronavirus, officials
asked students to leave campus if they can, and they cautioned
instructors against course adaptations that require students to stream
content, Diverse reported.
Faculty there are instead focused on finishing courses over email and even regular mail, administrators told the publication.
Communicate and document
The U.S. Department of Education is giving colleges more flexibility to
use online learning tools in a range of coronavirus-related scenarios
so long as instructors maintain regular, substantive communication with
students.
It gives an example of what that could look like: an instructor could
provide materials over email and then use chat features to communicate
with students, set up conference calls for group discussions and engage
in other exchanges over email.
To help set expectations for students, Kevin Kelly, a lecturer at San
Francisco State University and an ed tech consultant, suggests creating
a schedule of announcements each week. That could include a Monday
kickoff message, a midweek motivation note, and a Friday reminder of
upcoming due dates, he said.
Telling students to follow simple rules, like submitting their name and
course name in the subject line of emails, can help instructors juggle
multiple classes gone remote, he added.
The department also asked colleges to document "as contemporaneously as
possible" modifications they are making to courses. Instructors should
keep that in mind as they adapt their classes, Kelly told Education
Dive, though he admits "there probably will be some reverse
engineering."
Heard said Pepperdine faculty are being asked to turn in revised
syllabi that reflect changes in course scheduling, due dates and the
modality of assignments.
Thinking ahead
Several campuses moving instruction online have said they'll reassess
the situation in a few weeks. If distance learning continues beyond
that point, officials will likely need to address other concerns, such
as the availability of test proctoring, tutoring services, and the need
to stand up new tools and resources, Indiana's Siering said.
"You can wing it for two weeks," he said, "but what happens after that?"
How the situation plays out could also affect broader efforts to expand
online learning tools, EAB's Maloney noted. A negative experience
within an institution could make it harder for officials there to get
faculty on board with future online learning efforts, she said.
But Robert Lue, faculty director at Harvard's Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, is hopeful.
"This is extremely fast-breaking and kind of evolving by the minute as
we speak, so in some ways, I think the rate of change of this is going
to be extraordinary," he told Education Dive. "There is a part of me,
though, that feels that this will finally help us think much more
carefully about what digital means, and what we can actually do with
it."
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