Emergency Remote Teaching
A variety of circumstances might require you to temporarily deliver your class online with minimal notice, such as a viral or infectious disease outbreak, a family emergency requiring your presence elsewhere, or a natural disaster. This guide provides you suggested actions to take quickly when making the shift from teaching in a land-based classroom to teaching anywhere.
A good starting point for planning a shift to remote teaching is to understand the difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning
Shared Guidance from Collaborative Units
Prepare Online Class Sessions in Five Steps
Make a Plan
Consider using the Rule of 2's strategy
Stay Connected with Students
Determine how you will stay connected to students. Will you schedule office hours by phone call? Will you hold virtual office hours synchronously on Zoom? Will you simply contact students using the Announcement
Create or Identify Content to Distribute
Get the content prepared. Consider preparing a combination of brief lecture videos, existing open content, and readings based on your course plan. Assistance in adding and organizing this content in Canvas is available from the Center for Innovative Design and Instruction and can be requested by completing the Online Conversion Help Request form
Create Assignments and Assessments
Based on your plan determine how students can best demonstrate that they have met your expectations for the course. Again, be cognizant that students will have varying levels of access to technology are other important resources, so be flexible in your requirements. We want to remove barriers, not rigor. Also, consider student accessibility issues as you transition to remote teaching in a new format.
Teach Remotely
Time to get started. This will be a different teaching experience for you, and a different learning experience for your students. Teaching is difficult anyway, and teaching through a crisis presents several additional challenges. We are all human and trying to process what's happening in the world around us. Be flexible in your expectations. Be understanding with your students. Be human.
Additional Resources and Tips
1. Make a Plan
With limited time and resources to redesign courses for online or remote teaching, we need to keep things simple and straightforward. Priority should certainly be placed on providing students with the support they need during this time. That starts with understanding that we must be flexible with expectations. We want to remove barriers to students' learning without removing rigor.
Consider using the following tips and resources:
Use the Rule of 2's strategy
The Rule of 2's strategy was created for shifting to remote teaching during a crisis to establish or maintain guiding principles for your course, and keep things simple by focusing on two tools, chunking content, and focusing on flexible ways to engage students. Remember that as you go through this process you can work with a colleague, instructional designer, librarian, or student to help.
Recommended Resource
Name: Rule of 2's Worksheet
Type: Instructional Planning Tool
Time: 20-30 minutes to complete
Source: Plymouth State University
Consider course workload
It can be difficult to estimate the amount of time it takes the average college student to complete common academic tasks. This tool is provided as a helpful way to estimate the amount of time you are asking students to spend on your course based on different types of academic tasks (reading, writing, exams, etc). Be cognizant of how much time you're asking your students to spend working on your course.
Recommended Resource
Name: Course Workload Estimator
Type: Instructional Planning Tool
Time: 10-15 minutes to complete
Source: Rice University
Adjust expectations in the syllabus
Recommended Resource
Name: Adjusted Syllabus
Type: Example
Time: 5 minutes to review
Source: Brandon Bayne, UNC Chapel Hill
2. Stay Connected with Students
You are a vital connection for your students, and they want to hear from you. Keeping in touch with students is vital during any changes to your class(es). You'll want to let students know about changes in schedules, assignments, procedures, and broader course expectations.
Keep these principles in mind:
Reach out to students authentically
Students want to hear from you. Based on feedback from USU students, we recommend that you authentically reach out to students. This authentic reassurance can be enhanced as you review the Beginners Guide to Canvas #KeepTeaching
Recommended Resource
Name: Low-Effort, High Impact Remote Teaching Strategies
Type: Webinar
Time: 33 minutes to watch
Source: Center for Student Analytics
Set flexible expectations
Let students know how you plan to communicate with them, and how often. Tell students both how often you expect them to check their email (or other channels), and how quickly they can expect your response. Let them know if you are using the Canvas Inbox tool
Recommended Resource
Name: Use Announcements to Reach Students
Type: Instructional Video
Time: 4 minutes to watch
Source: Center for Innovative Design & Instruction
Communicate early and often
Recommended Resource
Name: Completing a Face-To-Face Course Online Following A Campus Mandate
Type: Blog article
Time: 6 minutes to read
Source: The Scholarly Teacher blog
3. Create or Identify Content to Distribute
You will likely need to provide additional course materials to support your changing plans, from updated schedules to reading that allows you to shift more -or all- instruction to asynchronous formats. Don't feel like you have to create content as there is a wealth of open content available. In a pinch, providing some new readings, podcasts, or videos with associated assignments may be your best bet for keeping the intellectual momentum of the course moving.
Consider these additional recommendations:
Create concise and relevant videos
Let go of thinking your videos need to be "fancy" and overproduced. You can humanize the online learning experience for your students by speaking authentically and keep it simple and straightforward. Some of the most effective videos can be recorded and uploaded from home and can be the basis or prompt for an asynchronous discussion in Canvas
Recommended Resource
Name: How to Create More Effective and Engaging Videos Without Getting Overwhelmed with Karen Costa
Type: Podcast
Time: 47 minutes to listen
Source: Episode 23: Lecture Breakers Podcast
Identify existing open content
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning resources that exist in the public domain. OER varies from full courses, course materials, modules, streaming videos, test banks, and homework. You can find your own OER to use for your course through the University Libraries, or if you need help in identifying resources contact USU's OER team to help you through the process. Think of other content that you could use like podcasts and blogs as well.
Recommended Resource
Name: 10 Ways You Can Use Podcasts in Your Course to Engage Students
Type: Blog article
Time: 10 minutes to read
Source: Barbi Honeycutt
Adapt existing course content
Recommended Resource
Name: Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository - Course Content
Type: Peer Reviewed Teaching Database
Time: 20 minutes to review ideas
Source: University of Central Florida
4. Create Assignments and Assessments
In the case of a campus closure or other crisis, some students will undoubtedly have difficulties meeting deadlines. Make expectations clear, but be ready to provide more flexibility than you normally would in your class. Lean on asynchronous engagement while remembering the main challenge during a campus disruption is whether students have access to computers, as anyone needing a campus computer lab may be unable to access necessary technologies.
Consider these suggestions when planning activities:
Provide flexible options
Simplify. Revisit and review your learning outcomes. What have you already assessed? Reduce. Try to identify assessments that can be used to evaluate more than one learning outcome with an inclusive approach
Recommended Resource
Name: Top ten tips for redesigning course assessments
Type: Blog article
Time: 4 minutes to read
Source: Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Design for accessibility
Keep things simple, but consider Plus One thinking. How can you assess learning in more than one way? Using UDL you can remove barriers to student learning, don't remove rigor. In a crisis, many students may only have a mobile device available, so make sure you are using mobile-friendly formats including PDFs, accessible documents
Recommended Resource
Name: How to Integrate Universal Design for Learning Principles In Your Online Course with Thomas Tobin
Type: Podcast
Time: 40 minutes to listen
Source: Episode 26: Lecture Breakers Podcast
Lean on asynchronous ideas
Recommended Resource
Name: Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository - Assessment
Type: Peer Reviewed Teaching Database
Time: 20minutes to review ideas
Source: University of Central Florida
5. Teach Remotely
Instructors are the most important point of interaction with students. Each of us is experiencing the current crisis in different ways with different contributing factors. Don't forget to humanize the learning experience as you engage with students. Be flexible in your expectations, and empathetic in your communications. Reach out to your students, and provide meaningful feedback. Also, consider ways to foster collaboration among students which can build and maintain a sense of community that can help keep students motivated and connected during times of crisis.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Provide positive feedback
By positively framing your feedback, you can improve the student learning experience. Show them support, and model a growth mindset with students by encouraging improvement from small failures. Feedback to students should be frequent, specific, balanced, and timely. Even in remote teaching situations, there are many ways to give your students better feedback with technology
Recommended Resource
Name: Positive Feedback in Remote Teaching and Learning Environments
Type: Webinar
Time: 37 minutes to watch
Source: Center for Student Analytics
Foster collaboration among students
By providing students with options to communicate and collaborate with their peers they will maintain and build a sense of community that can help students stay motivated to participate and learn. While synchronous solutions like Zoom can be used, consider using asynchronous tools like Canvas Discussions
Recommended Resource
Name: What I Am Learning About My Students During an Impossible Semester by James Lang
Type: Blog article
Time: 15 minutes to read
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
Human elements in remote teaching
Recommended Resource
Name: Humanizing Learning with Digital Tools with Michelle Pacansky-Brock
Type: Recorded ETE Seminar
Time: 78 minutes to watch
Source: Empowering Teaching Excellence
In addition to the resources cited throughout this resource, portions of the guidance were adapted, with permission, from the Stanford University "Teach Anywhere" website, the Georgia State University "Keep Teaching" website, and the Indiana University "Keep Teaching" website.
Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License