Moving Forward: Teaching in Uncertain Times | Community Blog on online, hybrid, and F2F teaching during the pandemic

Preparing for Post-Pandemic Teaching

I’m guessing we are all ready for 2020 to be over. Most of us are struggling to figure out how to manage our time and how to troubleshoot WebEx and how to keep our students engaged and how to use iCollege. Even with all the extra work we are putting into reinventing our classes, it’s…

What to Do with All Those Discussion Board Posts

In a previous blog post, Jennifer Hall gives advice about “Building a Better Discussion Board Assignment.” Hall reminds us of the relative ease and importance of using discussion boards to engage students and track their learning in hybrid and online course modalities, and she offers some great suggestions for how to give students choice and…

Now is the time to collect mid-semester feedback!

Don’t wait to collect feedback from your students! Mid-semester is a busy time for faculty and students. While you’re grading assignments and interacting with your students don’t forget to collect get mid-semester teaching feedback from your students. This semester, with all of the added stress and worry, it is even more important to do this…

Consider a DIY GIFT for mid-semester feedback

Another option for collecting mid-semester teaching feedback is to host your own class GIFT (Group Instructional Feedback Technique) session. The goal of a GIFT is to collect mid-semester qualitative feedback in such a way that students can interact remotely, see and respond to classmate comments, help you see common areas of support and concern. To…

Creating a Sense of Presence in the Online Classroom

Of all the things we’ve lost in this pandemic, the loss of presence has been the most pervasive. We’ve all felt it as we’ve watched the casualty numbers tick up, as we’ve smiled uselessly at strangers from behind masked faces, and as we’ve engaged with students in the online classroom. In order to alleviate this…

Building a Better Discussion Assignment

I remember my first discussion board assignment. It was 1995, and the whole process seemed confusing and futuristic. The teacher asked a simple question about the reading, and we all dutifully answered. Even in those early days, there was one know-it-all who had nothing better to do than chime in on every post and wow…

Meeting Students Where They Are: 3 Types of Functional Language for Teaching Synchronous Online Classes

By Viviana Cortes and Sally Ren (Dept. of Applied Linguistics and ESL) Voice delays, no instant feedback, overlapping interaction… The format of online synchronous teaching has demonstrated itself to be a challenging task for teachers, not only for the amount of planning required before class, but also for the use of instructional language during an…

They aren’t office hours any more–consider a name change

I don’t think many (if any) instructors are meeting their students in their faculty offices right now. That is a great option for a normal semester, but this semester is different. The term “office hour” is also somewhat unfriendly and many students, especially first and second year students, many not even know what office hours…

How to Teach F2F With a Mask and Create Caring Classroom

Dr. Jamie Landau (Director of CELT and Associate Professor of Communication Arts, Valdosta State University) published a very helpful article in Inside Higher Ed on teaching with a mask on. She covers the challenges of trying to project your voice through a face covering and offers some breathing tips. She also recommends using emojis for…

Due Dates are Closer Than They Appear

We have all been hearing that students are not engaging in class and that many are not submitting assignments on time. Make sure your assignment due dates are connected to the iCollege course calendar. Students also don’t use email the same way their instructors do and using email to send assignment deadline reminders may not…