Tips from Chris Wild, Master of the Humanities Collegiate Division (also emailed to everyone)

The following tips are taken from an email sent out by Christopher Wild, Master of the Collegiate Humanities Division.

They complement the information provided by Academic Technology Solutions accessible at https://teachingremotely.uchicago.edu/; and the Pedagogical Guidelines for Remote Teaching articulated by the Chicago Center for Teaching, accompanying this document. Also please check out the guidance put together by Bridget Madden of our own Visual Resource Center: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hefZxUGd5FVFwv7PjXp8cDyMgOW3LnevRrZLSyYk43s/edit

Of course, there are a myriad sources out there as all other institutions of higher learning are rushing to move instruction online. If you find something particularly useful, please point others in their direction by linking to them in the newly established Remote Teaching Blog of the Humanities Division: https://voices.uchicago.edu/remotehumanities. Particularly useful sources will be archived in the new Wiki “Remote Humanities.” Both may take another day or two to be fully functional.

Some Rules of the Road

●      The primary criterion for all of our courses, according to the University’s accreditation status, is that they provide regular and substantive instructor-student interaction appropriate to the credits given for the course. For most of our courses, which are valued at 100 units of credit, this amounts to 27-30 hours of in-person instruction per quarter. In a remote learning environment not all instruction is necessarily synchronous or in real time. Therefore, asynchronous instruction cannot simply be calculated as actual contact hours. Instead, instructors need to provide systematic instruction (synchronous or asynchronous) as well as regular and meaningful interaction with their students, amounting to the equivalent of 27-30 hours of class time. Similarly, instructors need to provide regular assignments and full assessment feedback on students’ coursework.

●      All portions of a course that are offered synchronously or in real time must be offered during the originally scheduled days and times. Otherwise, students may run into time conflicts that will be difficult to resolve under the current circumstances.

●      While the College’s policy to hold regular office hours is still in effect in the remote learning environment, it recognizes that conducting them in real time via, for instance, Zoom might not be feasible. Traditional office hours may thus be substituted with other modes of regular and responsive interaction, such as chat, email, discussion boards, etc..

●      Instructors need to be attentive to the students’ circumstances as they are performing their coursework remotely. Students might not have good internet access, might be in a different time zone, have fallen ill, or need other accommodations that make using some features of digital media difficult. Instructors are urged to find out what their students’ situations are, either individually or as a group, and work with them. All instructors should have a clear policy that offers alternatives if students cannot complete assignments due to technological or other limitations.

First Some Guiding Principles

●      You will want to start with the premise that the move to a remote learning environment will profoundly affect all aspects of your pedagogy. Reflect on how technologically mediated teaching will affect your learning goals and your strategies of achieving them. In other words, simply telecommunicating what we normally do in the classroom, whether conducting discussions or lecturing, is a recipe for frustration. Instead design your teaching to contend with the limitations and exploit the opportunities of the chosen pedagogical technologies.

●      Consider realistic goals for teaching remotely: As you think about moving instruction online, consider what you think you can realistically accomplish. Is it realistic to maintain your syllabus and schedule as you originally designed them, or would it be prudent to modify one or both? Is it realistic to expect students to keep up with the reading? Would it be prudent to add or subtract or modify some assignments to generate sufficient structure and accountability? How can you best keep students engaged with the course content?

●      Keep the technology simple but the pedagogy sophisticated. For a host of reasons (some of which are mentioned below) the University encourages its instructors to resort primarily to its supported software platforms: Canvas, Zoom, Panopto, Voices, etc.. If you are considering other platforms, please keep in mind that students tend to be familiar with Canvas and Zoom. They may find it difficult and anxiety-provoking to have to learn multiple forms of new technology in a time of emergency, and Academic Technology Solutions cannot advise them on platforms that ATS does not support. Similarly, you will want to avoid trying out too many tools at once, since it risks confusing the students and inviting technical problems.

●      Anticipate technical problems and pedagogical misfires. Circumstances beyond our control are forcing this move to an unfamiliar learning environment upon us, with minimal time for preparation or adjustment. Nobody is expecting that your teaching will be perfect right away, least of all the students. In fact, you may want your pedagogical strategy to encompass the active involvement of your students in the course’s operation and success, facilitating a more active and communal learning experience. In other words, you may want to acknowledge and invite experimentation on the part of everyone involved in the course.

●      Finally, please keep the personal situation and psychological state of your students in mind. You are doing more than communicating knowledge and teaching skills. You are providing form and meaning in a situation where everyday structures appear to be disintegrating. Your teaching also cultivates a sense of community and belonging just as our students have been uprooted from their college life. Since many of our students are far from campus and Hyde Park, you and the intellectual world-making you undertake by teaching, represent much of their educational experience at the University of Chicago for the Spring Quarter. Finally, they are looking to you, as their teachers, for orientation, counsel, and compassion. So please be kind, positive, respectful, and engaging; and do your best to project the care, passion, and enthusiasm that we bring to our work in the classroom, despite the technological imposition. 

Planning and Designing your Course in a Remote Learning Environment

●      A pressing decision will be whether to teach your course synchronously, with the class meeting “live” at its regularly scheduled time for lectures and/or discussions, or asynchronously, with students able to access class materials (e.g., recorded lectures, online discussion boards, or other forms of instruction, assignments, or assessment) at other times. These two approaches may also be combined. However, it is important to note that the decision may not be yours to make, since it is our responsibility to ensure that all students enrolled in the class can readily access it.  A great deal will depend upon the technological capabilities and domestic conditions of your students at their remote locations. Therefore, you will first need to survey your students in order to determine what is possible. In fact, it may turn out that you will have to conduct your course almost entirely asynchronously, for instance recording lectures rather than delivering them live or having students record their presentations rather than present to the whole group. Assuming for the moment that all of the students enrolled in your class can access it both synchronously and asynchronously, I would recommend combining the modes, so that they can productively complement each other. But in any case, you should plan to develop robust asynchronous modules that would ideally frame more limited synchronous components. For more information on asynchronous versus synchronous teaching see the CCT’s Pedagogical Guidance for Remote Teaching.

●      Similarly, you will want to rethink the role of course assistants. If you are trying (or end up having) to minimize the amount of instruction delivered synchronously, then you might want CA’s to moderate a discussion board or provide feedback on students’ response posts/papers rather than conduct a real-time discussion via Zoom.

●      At the risk of sounding heretical, remote teaching does not have to be entirely high-tech. Instead of recording your lectures via Zoom or Panopto, you could simply plan to frame and scaffold the assigned materials more elaborately with comprehension and discussion questions, content maps, or other assignments that prompt the students to engage and process the readings intensively. In remote teaching, it makes a lot of sense to focus more on writing as a medium and practice for learning and inquiry. Instead of assigning papers for the end of the course you might want to pull the writing process into your teaching. All of this can be done in a relatively low-tech manner.

●      In remote teaching, it is important to articulate clear learning goals and expectations and to communicate them repeatedly to students. Redundancy (at least when it comes to communicating learning goals) is your friend! It can also be helpful to facilitate a conversation with the students about the content of the course to make sure that they all understand how the class is working and what they are expected to do, and to engage their questions. In fact, since a remote learning environment lacks many of the channels that give you clues about the efficacy of your pedagogy, soliciting frequent and explicit feedback is all the more important.

First Things to Do

●      Request your Canvas Course Site immediately! Students will receive a notification that they have been enrolled and that the course is going forward which sends a positive message.

●      Reach out to your students as soon as possible, introduce yourself, the course, your preferred mode of communication, etc., and inquire about the technological capabilities and personal situation at their remote location. I recommend the survey that Valerie Levan developed, accessible here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1x9LFsi5sS_7-mp3AxQjy2N8xgd6ui-qxWQmCTMbz-Jk/edit Instructions for administering the survey are in a further post.

●      Give thought to how your students will obtain or access the necessary course materials, such as textbooks, scans, films, art supplies, etc.. Note: The Seminary Coop will ship all texts domestically to the students free of charge before April 15!

●      Attend one of the Workshops on Teaching Remotely with Zoom and Canvas, which are either being organized by your department/program or offered directly by ATS. For the latter you can sign up here: https://teachingremotely.uchicago.edu/register-for-training/

●      Do at least one practice session on Zoom with colleagues, graduate students, friends, etc., for the synchronous component of your teaching.

Some Technical and Logistical Advice

●      Make sure your computer operating system and anti-virus software are up to date.

●      As a basic security measure, don’t recycle your CNET password when you sign up for software platforms that are not supported by the University.

●      Please be aware of the FERPA rules around sharing student information and assume that unsupported platforms may not be FERPA compliant.

●      Consider archival issues with unsupported platforms. Data entered into these systems is often designed to disappear in short time frames. Any content created in unsupported platforms should be downloaded or transferred to a supported system so that it can be referred to after the fact.

●      For the aforementioned reasons, I recommend that you use the Announcement function in Canvas for communications with students rather than emailing directly or using the rapid mail function in your class roster.