Guidelines for Promoting Equity in Online Learning

✔️Best Practices ✔️

Plan for Asynchronous Learning

• Create learning experiences that students can complete in their own time, at their own pace

  • Set deadlines, but allow plenty of time for students to complete, ask questions, and get support

• Unless there is no other way, please try to avoid asking all students to be available online at a specific time. Access will be a huge challenge for some students.

Set Online Office Hours

• Use online chat and/or a tool like Hangouts video chat or Zoom to host office hours throughout the week so students have an opportunity to interact live with you and with each other

  • Set definite parameters for online office hours that are consistent and easy to communicate

    • Suggestion: break up your set office hours during the day. We are being asked to do four hours total, so I am setting up 9-11am, 12:30-2:30pm. I also left open the door for students to reach out and ask for an appointment outside those windows of time.

      • I am mostly using the Google Hangouts Chat text chat, with a set hour each day where I will also be available on Zoom video chat; for now, I set a morning time slot on M/W/F and an afternoon time slot T/Th for the video chat in the hopes that it will offer something that works for kids who need to see me.

      • All of this is drop-in for students, as needed and as available. For science, I don't see a need for all students to show up at one time, so I'm trying to keep my times flexible and on an as-needed basis to prevent double booking with colleagues who may need to have students or groups of students show up together at a specific time with them to collaborate.

Prioritize and be Realistic about Expectations

• Try to keep students thinking and learning, but lower expectations for how much time they are going to be able to spend on work for your class.

  • An assignment that might take a half hour for a student to complete in class may take an hour or longer without your support and the support of their peers.

  • I'm seeing a lot of people out there who homeschool all the time gently letting those of us from traditional school know that they do not spend eight hours a day in formal teaching and learning with their children. Just something to keep in mind.

• Everyone is going to struggle with motivation and distraction to some extent.

  • This is a constant problem for me, compounded by having my husband, child, very confused and needy dog, and two downstairs housemates home around me all the time right now. Now imagine also having a prefrontal cortex that isn't fully developed (that's the part of your brain involved in executive functioning)--that's your student trying to settle down and do work for you.

Share Specific Expectations and Instructions

• When you set up an assignment, try to give as much specific instruction as you can to help students get started.

• If possible, a ballpark estimate of the time you expect them to spend on the assignment or activity is a good idea and will help with the feedback piece below.

Show Empathy and Seek Feedback

• This is a challenging time for our students and families. Please remember that a number of factors may impede our students' ability to learn while at home

• Here are some challenges our students may face:

  • Illness in the immediate family or extended family

  • Providing childcare for younger siblings or relatives

  • Sharing space and resources in the home; while some students may have access to a computer or device, it may be shared with several family members

  • Working additional hours to help support family; family-owned and operated businesses may be leaning heavily on immediate family members to stay afloat right now

  • Food and/or housing insecurity

• Check in with students about what sorts of resources or activities are helping them learn vs. which ones may be confusing or hard to access. Most importantly, seek feedback about how much time students are spending on work for class. Try to determine whether time is being spent on learning or on trying to figure out what to do or how to make an online resource work.