Emergencies related to severe weather or a health crisis can result in missed class time for students and instructors. We recommend the following best-practices for teaching remotely when you may not be able to get to school.

First things first

• Be patient with yourself and your students. Things are not always going to go as planned, and that is okay.

• Remember the needs of your students, their home situations, their families, their anxieties, and external factors. Be flexible and be adaptable. Be kind to one another.

• Consider the distractions of being at home when making deadlines. It's often best to have the same deadline for all weekly assignments and stick to that deadline each week.

Communicate with Students

• Have a consistent communication strategy to avoid confusion.

• We recommend using the Canvas Inbox messaging feature and Canvas Announcements to communicate with your students. Just publish your course and use the built-in tools to communicate with your students. 

• Post your syllabus in Canvas and update it with course changes as needed.

• Follow best practices to build community and hold online discussions (from Duke Learning Innovations Blog).

Video Tutorial: Communicating through Canvas

• Video Tutorial: Communicating through Canvas

Synchronous Class Meetings

Holding Videoconferences

• Meet virtually over Zoom or Google Hangouts to hold online real-time, interactive classes and office hours.  Zoom has a screen sharing and presentation mode that you and your students can use to share screens. You and your students also have the option to annotate on your shared screen. 

• When using Zoom, we recommend turning on live transcription.

• Create Zoom Meetings in Canvas so students can easily find the meetings. 

• Practice using Zoom with your students the first time you meet together.

• Allow students to choose whether to turn on their cameras or not. You should not require students to turn on their cameras, though you may encourage it.

Infographic about student cameras in virtual meetings

Article about trauma-informed teaching and student cameras in meetings

Video Tutorial: Create Zoom Meetings in Canvas

• • • Create a Zoom Meeting in Canvas

Recording Videoconferences

Zoom Option 1: Cloud Recording

• If you choose to record a Zoom Meeting using the "cloud recording" option in Zoom, your recordings are stored in Panopto automatically. More detailed instructions on accessing Zoom Meeting recordings in Panopto and making them available to students can be found at this guide to Zoom cloud recording at NCSSM. 

• Never change the sharing permissions for a course recording or course video folder. Recordings of class should not be shared with anyone except students enrolled in the class.

Zoom Option 2: Record to your Machine

• During your Zoom meeting, press the record button and choose "Record on this Computer." After the meeting has concluded, your computer will process the video and save it to a "Zoom" folder in your documents folder.  In this folder will be a folder for each meeting you record. In these folders, you will find files called "zoom_0.mp4." That is the recording you can then upload to your "Course Videos" area in your Canvas course. 

  • • Never change the sharing permissions for a course recording or course video folder. Recordings of class should not be shared with anyone except students enrolled in the class.

• PDF Guide to Recording a Zoom Meeting on Your Machine

• Video Guide to uploading videos to the "Course Videos" area in your course

Google Meet - Recording Meetings

•   If you are using Google Meet, record your Google Meet Sessions and provide links to students.  Only share videos with students. Do not set permissions to allow others with links to view.

Teaching Face-to-Face and Remote Simultaneously

• If you must teach face-to-face students and students on Zoom at the same time, we recommend these 10 tips for teaching face-to-face and remote students simultaneously. 

• You may need to rely on the Zoom chat feature often, since face-to-face and zoom students may have difficulty hearing each other in some classrooms.

Preparing Asynchronous Course Content

Recording Lectures & Screen Recording

• If your class meetings traditionally include lectures, think about how to redesign them to be multiple short videos. Use Camtasia to record your computer screen. If you are unfamiliar with Camtasia, you can also create a Zoom Meeting without participants and use the built-in recording function in Zoom to create screen recordings. 

• If you need to create quick tutorial videos, Loom is another great option you can use to record your screen. After recording with Loom, share the video link or use the embed code to add it to a Canvas course.

Distributing, collecting and grading student work

• Post documents and course materials in Canvas. See the NCSSM Canvas Style Guide for more guidance.

• Provide thorough details about each assignment. Include the outcomes, what students are to do, and how they should submit, etc. In the case of assignments, it's always best to over-communicate your expectations because students may not have the chance to ask you clarifying questions. 

• Use Canvas Speedgrader to grade and return assignments electronically.

• Track student grades in Canvas. This provides increased transparency for students.

• Use tools like Canvas Discussions or  FlipGrid (optional) to have asynchronous discussions.

• Offer online quizzes, questionnaires or tests where appropriate using built-in Canvas quizzing.

• Suggest online tools to accommodate group work such as Google Docs, Google Hangouts, etc.

• Consider how you could incorporate alternative course materials and adapt assignments to suit online learning in case of an extended emergency.

Special Accommodations

• Plan ahead to ensure student IEPs and consider whether any accommodations are required for the student to continue to access Virtual Learning and if so, they are documented in the student’s IEP.

• Consider accommodating students with IEPs by allowing extra time during Canvas quizzes.

• Differentiate assignments in Canvas when needed by assigning a different assignment to an individual student or group of students

• Design your course in Canvas to be accessible by anyone, including those who may have certain disabilities.

• Live closed-captioning of Zoom Meetings currently requires someone in your meeting to type the captions, so it can be a challenge.

• Captions will automatically be added to recordings when using cloud recording. Transcriptions can be downloaded as text files in Panopto if needed. These captions are machine-generated and may not always be WCAG compliant. 

• If you need assistance with closed captioning video clips for any of your students, or help with accessibility please contact TLC.

Delivering Classes in Areas with Limited or No Internet Access

For teachers

• Teaching Students with Limited or No Internet Connection

For students

• Accessing Canvas Courses with limited Internet Access