moving from In-Person to Online

Communicate regularly. Let students know about changes and when they can expect more specific information. They will be grateful for anything you can share.

Set expectations. Create a consistent communication plan that answers the following: How and where will you communicate information with students? How often should students check their email? How quickly they can expect a response. Share this plan with your students.

Manage your (and your students) communications load. You will receive lots of individual requests for information that could be useful to all your students. To save your time and to avoid swamping your students, consider letting your students know that you will send out a regular group email answering questions.

Share academic integrity expectations. Let students know that they must still uphold the Academic Honor Code. If students are now able to collaborate or use certain materials for assessments, let them know about these changes.

Use TLEARN to communicate grades. FERPA-protected data (such as grades, GPAs, or personally identifiable information like Social Security numbers) should never be sent via email (even university email). TLEARN is a secure way to communicate individual assignment grades. TigerPaws is the University’s secure method of submitting official midterm and final course grades.

Build communication channels. Regular communication is important for reproducing the collaboration you have already built into your course. It also allows you to maintain a sense of community that can help keep students motivated to participate and learn.

Link to clear goals and outcomes. As with in-class learning, be sure to have explicit and transparent purposes and outcomes for all student-to-student interactions. Consider how online activities help students to meet course outcomes and prepare for assignments.

Build in simple accountability. Find ways to ensure that students are accountable for the work they do in any online discussions, synchronous learning experiences, and collaborations. Assigning points for online discussion posts or comments made during Zoom sessions can be tedious, so some instructors ask for reflective statements where students detail their contributions and reflect on what they learned from the conversation.

Replace physical resources with digital resources whenever possible. Remember students will not be on campus with access to physical materials (or perhaps even their course textbooks). There are a number of free and easy-to-use apps that will allow you to take quick scans of print texts with your phone and convert them to PDFs.

Announce when and where new material is posted. Let students know when new material is available and where they can find it. Be consistent in where you post course materials.

Keep things mobile device/phone friendly. In a crisis, students may only have a phone or other mobile device available, so make sure you are using mobile-friendly formats, such as PDFs. Videos can take lots of bandwidth, so only require them if you are confident that students will have access to them while learning off-campus.

Consider saving files (such as PowerPoint presentations) to PDFs. PDFs are easier to read on phones and tablets, can easily be reduced to smaller file sizes, and can help ensure that your file’s formatting and structure remains consistent. Remember that PDFs cannot be easily modified, so do not use them for files needing collaborative editing. Most programs can convert to/save as PDFs: Microsoft files to PDF, using Google Suite to download a files as a PDF, saving a document as a PDF on Mac.

Make adjustments. Be ready to change assignment expectations to meet the realities of the situation. Consider whether you should allow individual rather than group projects and adjust, as necessary, the resources needed for completion.

Offer some consistency. Put everything in the same place. Make work due through the same channels and at the same time (and, if possible, the same day of the week). Directions and rubrics can be included when you create an assignment in TLEARN.

Remember students are off-campus. Many of us already collect work electronically, but remember that students only have access to the technologies, softwares, and resources they can access off-campus. While many resources, including softwares and library materials, can be accessed (sometimes with limitations) off-campus, not all students have the exact same opportunities and technological resources off-campus.

Think twice before collecting work through email. There are many issues associated with this method: inability to access attachments, submissions getting lost, an overload of emails in your inbox, students forgetting to hit send. TLEARN and Dropbox both ensure that the students have a record of submission (and so do you!).

State expectations, but be ready to allow extensions. You can still expect high levels of academic rigor and performance, but remember that some students will be facing new difficulties and challenges. Make expectations (both existing and new) clear, but provide more flexibility than you normally would in your in-person classes.

Adopt and share your revised submission policies. Tell students that it is their responsibility to ensure that assignment files can be properly accessed. Be sure to have policies in place for how students can document technical issues and how you will accommodate for late submissions due to these issues.

Keep things simple--for you and your students. It is fairly easy to give smaller quizzes online; this can be a useful way to check in on students and help them keep on track during class disruptions. Providing high-stakes tests online can be more challenging: they place extra stress on you and students; test integrity can be difficult to ensure; it takes considerable time to build online tests, and there will inevitably be technical issues.

Consider alternative assessment options. Delivering a secure exam online can be difficult without a good deal of preparation and support, and even with these resources there will be unexpected problems and technical issues. Exams that focus more on application rather than recitation can be harder to grade, but you have fewer worries about test security and technology failures. Ask students to apply knowledge to scenarios or to explain their justification for choosing one of multiple correct answers. Or have them engage in another method that still allows them to demonstrate student learning outcomes, such as: , such as: personal reflection on learning, infographic, summary video, advertisement, brochure, research proposal, video essay, annotated bibliography or article review, analysis of data.

Prepare for technical issues. The more guidance and instruction you provide prior to the test, the fewer issues you will encounter. Adopt and share a policy for how students can document technical issues and how you will accommodate for these issues.

Keep accessibility in mind. Official learning and testing accommodations issued by Student Accessibilities Services are still in effect; however, students will not be able to take tests through the Accommodated Testing Center. It will be your responsibility to ensure that students are still provided, as needed, with longer testing times. For tests administered synchronously during regular class time, remember that students who need extended testing times cannot be expected to keep working past the end of your class as they may have another class to attend. It will therefore be necessary to make appropriate arrangements. Consult the Accessibilities and Accommodations page for more information.

Give students time. Students will be In classes most of the day. For “take-home” tests or anything to be completed outside of the normal class time, give students as much time as possible (a minimum of 24-hours, 48-72 hours is ideal) to complete the work.

Think about the realities of the situation. If you feel a closed-book, proctored, timed exam is critical for your course, consult the Collaborative for some best practices. It is possible to do this in Zoom by having students show their work area on their webcam as they download a test, write answers by hand, and upload pictures of their work. But there are many potential problems with this method: students must have working webcams, additional time must be built into the exam time for the uploading process, students will still have their devices open, and you must proctor additional exam times for students with accommodations.