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“This is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture that show up in our organizations. Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify. The characteristics listed below are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being pro- actively named or chosen by the group.”

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Copy of Check-ins and Circle Questions - Combined - Google Slides

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25 Things You Didn’t Know Google Slides Could Do | Shake Up Learning

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I talk about the wonders of Google Slides CONSTANTLY and frequently refer to it as the Swiss Army Knife of G Suite. It can do all kinds of things! In this post, I will show you 25 Things You Didn't Know Google Slides Could Do.

Since originally sharing this post in 2018, it has become the #1 post on Shake Up Learning, so I decided to add a podcast version!

The podcast is broken into two episodes (Part 1 and Part 2) and embedded below.

The more I learn about Google Slides, the more versatile it becomes.

Your eyes will be opened when you see what's possible, and you will see that this list can go far, far beyond just 25.

This post comes from one of my presentations. I'm also embedding and linking to the slides for you!

In this blog post, you will learn some fun little tricks that help you create interactive learning experiences, create images and eBooks, insert audio, charts, and diagrams, as well as, easy stop motion animation.

Please refer to the slides for details and additional resources. This would end up being a 20-page blog post if I typed it out.
What are your favorite ways to use Google Slides in the classroom? CLICK HERE to open the Google Slide deck in a new window. Listen to Part 1 of this article. Listen to Part 2 of this article. Update! 30 Things You Didn't Know Google Slides Could Do

I could keep going, but I'm out of breath! 25 for now, and more later, y'all!

I hope this gives you some new ideas for using Google Slides in your classroom.
What are your favorite ways to use Google Slides in the classroom? (Leave a comment below.)
I frequently refer to Google Slides as the Swiss Army Knife of the G Suite tools because it is capable of being so much more than a presentation tool. In this course, you will learn how to use Slides in new and unexpected ways in your classroom that will engage your students and make learning more dynamic!
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25 Things You Didn't Know Google Slides Could Do

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I talk about the wonders of Google Slides CONSTANTLY and frequently refer to it as the Swiss Army Knife of G Suite. It can do all kinds of things! In this post and podcast series, I will show you 25 Things You Didn't Know Google Slides Could Do.

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Tip: Teaching Math Remotely - Tips for Teaching Professors

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Let me preface with a disclaimer that math is very far from my subject area expertise - but that said, I've done some research to share some technology (high- and low-tech) options to help with online math instruction.
Whiteboards
This seems to be the #1 tool that math instructors are missing from in-person teaching, and even as a humanities instructor, I couldn't agree more. I miss my classroom whiteboards as well! I don't love the Zoom whiteboard, so here are some alternatives. First is Whiteboard Fox, which is browser-based, can be easily shared as view-only or editable, and doesn't require an account.

Here's a good discussion of using WhiteboardFox for online math, and a video about WhiteboardFox:

Google Jamboard is a virtual whiteboard that works like a Google doc; it's more effective with tablets and pens than on a laptop, although viewing from a laptop is fine. Other virtual whiteboard options include Mural, Miro, Padlet, and OneNote. Here's an article about using OneNote to record lessons - one neat piece is that it links audio to sections of the notes, so students can click on a note to go back to that time in the video - and here's a video example of a math instructor using OneNote for a live online class:

High-tech isn't always the best solution, and there's lots of advice and instructions for DIY doc cameras as well - here's a graphic of the basic idea:

Graphic from https://ditchthattextbook.com/online-whiteboard/
Online calculator, equation, & graphing apps
Another useful tool is the ability to write mathematical/scientific formulas and equations. LaTeX is a typeset system that allows you to create advanced formulas and equations. Here's a step-by-step guide to Using LaTeX with the New Canvas Quiz Engine. To create the equations, you can use a basic WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") editor like this Codecogs one. For more fun with LaTeX, here's a great LaTeX Cheat Sheet created by Dave Richeson (Dickinson College).

Desmos calculator has a large set of common graphs that can be edited either in real-time (for a screen capture video) or saved as images.

Mathcha is a whiteboard/equation editor with LaTeX built in; you can use the web-based version or create a Notebook to save and use off-line.

CalcPlot3D is a free online 3D graphing calculator ( credit for these last two ideas to Monica VanDieran - thank you!)

Lessons & Simulations
Geogebra is a set of online tools that allow instructors to create classes and enroll students, a bit like Google Classroom. Short of setting up a class, students can take mini-lessons on a variety of topics where they get to manipulate equations, graphs, etc. and then answer a couple questions - and get immediate feedback. I experimented a bit and created a one-question example here: Graphing.

There are lots of free interactive math (and science) simulations (examples in image below) from PhET Project at the Univ. of Colorado-Boulder
Remote Math Pedagogy
Beyond the tools which can make remote math instruction more effective, it might be helpful to hear from other math instructors what they've done to successfully translate their classes to remote delivery. Here's an article with a "talk-though" of the good points in an online math lesson, supported by video clips from the lesson. It is interesting if you want to see what an online lesson looks like and read some discussion about successful pedagogical choices.

The Mathematics Assessment Project provides examples of formative and summative assessment tasks for mathematics, and if you're in search of OER (Open Educational Resources) materials, My Open Math is free online mathematics instruction in the form of questions and video support as well as open source texts.
More resources:
Math colleagues - I would love to add to this list with resources you've found helpful! Please add them in the comments or contact me directly.
Share Tips for Teaching Professors

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Let me preface with a disclaimer that math is very far from my subject area expertise - but that said, I've done some research to share some technology (high- and low-tech) options to help with online math instruction.

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TIP: Teaching Science Remotely - Tips for Teaching Professors

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In a prior newsletter, I shared some ideas for teaching math remotely, including different whiteboard tools and online graphs/simulations. I have collected here some resources for science teaching - lots of interactive activities like virtual labs, simulations, and field trips, in addition to more static OER text-based activities.
All sciences

Here's an article discussing various virtual dissection options

American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) article about shifting biology classes online - addressing both different science tools and broader pedagogy concerns

University of Utah's Genetic Science Learning Center has a student-facing site, Learn Genetics, and a teaching-facing site, Teach Genetics, that offer complementary online lessons and teacher materials for teaching genetics and health

Earth Sciences (Ecology, Environmental Science, Geology...) Engineering Psychology More resources:
Thanks for reading & I hope you have found this list of resources helpful! Please let me know if there's another resource you'd recommend.
Share Tips for Teaching Professors

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In a prior newsletter, I shared some ideas for teaching math remotely, including different whiteboard tools and online graphs/simulations. I have collected here some resources for science teaching - lots of interactive activities like virtual labs, simulations, and field trips, in addition to more static OER text-based activities.

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5 Tips to Create Community in Your Online Classes

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5 Tips to Create Community in Your Online Classes

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First in a series of quick teaching tips backed by evidence and research on teaching.

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from How to be a better online teacher, Effective teaching online, 10 Best practices for teaching online, Best practices: online pedagogy:
1. Show up and be visible. Have a social presence in your online classroom.
2. Be your unique self. Insert your humor, personal stories, pictures of your pets.
3. Put yourself in your students' shoes. Give them options for how to complete assignments. Ask them for feedback. Consider time zones if asking students to participate synchronously. Make sure your content is accessible to all students.
4. Organize course content intuitively in modules and 10 minute chunks.
5. Add visual appeal. Break up your text with photos and leave white space.
6. Explain your expectations. Have a clearly written syllabus.
7. Scaffold learning activities and provide feedback.
8. Provide examples and share how the course connects to a broader community.
9. Make class an inviting and pleasant place to be. Break up a large class into smaller sections with no more than 10 students in each group.
10. Commit to continuous improvement.

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Transcript

John: The traditional college model of full-time face-to-face class attendance does not work well for people with difficult work schedules, those that live at a distance from campus, or who face other barriers to attending classes on campus. In this episode, we examine how the HyFlex course modality can break down these barriers and allow more people to realize their potential.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist...

John: ...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca: Together we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

[MUSIC]

John: Today our guest is Judith Littlejohn. Judie is an instructional designer and historian from Genesee Community College in Batavia, New York. She is a 2014 recipient of a State University of New York Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Professional Service and a 2015 recipient of a State University of New York FACT2 Award for Excellence in Instruction. Judie chaired a committee that established procedures for HyFlex courses at Genesee Community College. Welcome, Judie.

Judie: Thank you.

Rebecca:Today our teas are:

Judie: Mine is a blueberry green tea.

John: I have Tea Forte black currant tea.

Rebecca: I have Prince of Wales tea.

John: We invited you here to talk about HyFlex courses. But first, perhaps you could define what a HyFlex course is.

Judie: A HyFlex course is a regularly scheduled course in which all the content is provided online so that students can choose to participate in the classroom live, or they can video conference into the live class, or they can participate asynchronously online. So, students can also choose every week or during each class time which way they're going to participate. So, if a student regularly attends class, and then has a medical appointment, and has to miss class, they can catch up later on online. Or if somebody has to travel in this class, they can participate online. Or if somebody registers, planning to take the course online but then decide they'd rather be in the classroom, they can change their mind and come to class. So, it's literally highly flexible, in that the student has full choice of exactly how they're going to participate from course session to course session.

Rebecca: Sounds to me like if you're going to have something that's that flexible for students, then there's a lot of planning that needs to go up front on the part of the faculty. Can you talk a little bit about what the requirements are for a class like that, and what some of the things are that a faculty member might need to think about to have a good experience across all those different options?

Judie: So that's exactly the most difficult part, I think of a HyFlex course, is just the amount of preparation the faculty member needs. So literally, you have to create the entire online course, so that you can think of it as two course preps really, because you have your full face-to-face course and your full online course. And it's key that before the course even opens, you have the entire course schedule all fully developed so that the students can look ahead and see, week to week, or if you're meeting two or three times a week from one class session to the next, exactly what's going to happen in the classroom, or how they would have an equivalent learning experience online if they chose to be online. So it's tons of work. And then on top of that you have to be comfortable with the equipment. So you have to have students video conferencing into your live classroom, you have to manage those remote participants; you have to be able to include them in what's going on. So if you're having a debate, you need some virtual attendees to be able to participate in a debate or in small group work. And you just need to be able to manage all that... respond to questions from virtual participants, and pay attention to your face-to-face students too. And make sure that the students in the classroom and the virtual participants can all see each other.

Rebecca: Why would I want to do this?

Judie: So, it is a lot of work. But the faculty who do it say that the students get a lot out of it, because they do have that freedom to choose how they're going to participate. The way our college is set up, we have our main campus in Batavia. And then we have six, we call them campus centers. So they're like little satellite campuses in our region. And we have a four-county service area; it's about the size of the State of Delaware. From one corner of our service area to the other is almost a two-hour drive. So if you think about how spread out our students are, if they're in our area, and then the size of some of our programs, or how complex some of the equipment and materials are in the programs, we can't offer every course at all those campus centers. So many times the students will be driving over an hour, just to get to our main campus to take a one-hour class. And it just doesn't make sense. So we struggle with enrollments in some of these programs. But if we offer the courses this way (HyFlex), the students can stay where they are and still participate in the class. Some of these rural, remote areas don't have very good wifi access. So the students can just drive to their nearest campus center and participate from there. So it does help with student access to the courses. And just with work schedules, family life schedules, it helps people stay in college, even if work and family are disrupting what time of day they can participate.

John: You mentioned the ability to go to other campus centers, would there be separate meeting rooms where students might meet in or would they have to do it on their own from some location on the campus center, if it's not offered at that site,

Judie: Well, there's a mix of that type of thing. So if you're at a campus center with an empty classroom, you could go in and watch it from there if the staff help you get set up for that. If you have your own laptop and headset, you could participate from just about anywhere. It's funny that you mentioned that because currently, the Dean of Distributed Learning is working with the Campus Center's Associate Deans on a grant project where they would come up with funding for eight or 10 little workstations, like semi-private workstations, at each of the campus centers so students could participate in this type of course in the future,

Rebecca: Especially because of high speed internet and things, it would be really important if you're going to participate synchronously remotely, that all students necessarily have that available to them at their homes.

Judie: Yeah, exactly. So, these workstations would be excellent for them.

John: What sort of software are you using for doing the live streaming in the remote sessions?

Judie: Right now we have a small group that is using WebEx who had been using it historically for other purposes. But the college as a whole uses Zoom. So Zoom has been working out really well. There's a Zoom learning tool integration with Blackboard. And so we can have it set up right in the course so it's seamless for the students to access it. We also use the Ensemble video server, and there is a Zoom to Ensemble link. So they call it ingestion. So when you record in Zoom to the cloud, then ensemble will ingest your video and publish it for you. So it's right there in your Ensemble library ready to pull into Blackboard into your class. There's an additional step where you have to trigger the captioning, and then go back through and double check the captions. But other than that, it's pretty seamless.

Rebecca: How many classes have you offered in HyFlex method so far? And can you give us a sense as to how they're working or what's unique or really exciting about some of those classes,

Judie: Just off the top of my head right now I'd say we have about a dozen running. So right now our Computer Information Systems and Computer Networking, people use HyFlex in their program. And we also have Paralegal Studies offering all of their courses this way, so that they can extend their reach. Paralegal in particular, had trouble with those students who lived about an hour from campus and weren't able to make the drive to all the classes. The way this all came about was: our Provost... her name's Kate Schiefen, and she's our Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs... she came up with this idea last fall to really kind of get our hands around HyFlex, because faculty were trying to do it independently, and they didn't have much guidance or support. So we put a team together to come up with guidelines or requirements for what has to be present each course and what you need in each classroom that's going to offer courses this way. What are the expectations? Where are the definitions? We looked at it holistically because we need our registrar to be able to schedule these courses with the meaningful code, so that when we report to SUNY what types of classes we have, they're coded correctly. Everything from that to how the courses are posted on the website in the schedule so that students understand what kind of course they're getting into, and what kind of equipment they need, and what the student expectation is. We looked at everything from top to bottom, how it affected the whole college and all the different offices... So like our success coaches, and how do they explain the course to the students that they're advising... and put together a big manual, it's a 43-page guidebook, that should be referenced in your show notes, I think, for anyone who wants to take a look at that. And we do have condensed versions for people, so they don't have to read all of that.

John: I thought the 43 page was the simplified version. [LAUGHTER]

Judie: So yeah, we have the whole process the faculty member has to go through to make sure that their course meets the online course quality standards and all accessibility standards, and has all the content and schedules that they need... and then how we have the room setup with the microphones and the carpeting and soundproofing and things like that, and how the messages get out to the students. At this point, we use Banner as our student information system. And so we have it set up so that once a student registers for a HyFlex course, then within 24 hours, they receive an email that explains "You just registered for a HyFlex course that means..." ...you know, and then this explanation. So the student knows that they should have a headset or a webcam and a microphone. And if they choose to participate remotely or of course they're welcome to come on campus. So a lot of different things are going on right now. In our college in Batavia, we're working on getting two rooms a year upgraded to be labeled HyFlex classrooms. So that carpeting is coming in, different furniture, desks on wheels, so that people can form into small groups easier... just more useful and versatile learning spaces are being created. So that's helpful. And in the meantime, we have to train the faculty and make sure that they're comfortable and come up with their whole timeline of development. Because on our campus, I'm the instructional designer, but I'm the only one. So I can't really develop a dozen HyFlex courses at a time. But I can work with the faculty who are developing their own materials. So we have a couple different timelines depending on if you already have a fully developed online course that's already been through all the different review processes or if you've never taught online at all. So there's a big spectrum of faculty that are interested in teaching in the HyFlex modality but have different levels of experience with all the technology. So you might be looking at a year and a half, like three semesters of development, before you finally have your HyFlex course. Or you could start developing today and have it ready in the spring if you've already been teaching online and are comfortable with that.

John: And it sounds like the pathway is from online teaching to this rather than primarily from face-to-face to HyFlex...where it would be an easier pathway. Is that correct?

Judie: Absolutely, that's an easier pathway. And we see it, we can see it in the courses that we have running now. Because there's a couple of faculty members who have been teaching online historically, who are very student focused and very aware of the importance of active learning, and are used to working with students that they're not seeing right in front of them. And their courses are fine, they had them set up, they had their schedules ready, a nd we really didn't have much of a problem. We have other faculty who have never taught online before and are unfamiliar with active learning, and really unfamiliar with some of the changes in learning theory that have come out over the last 20 years...

John: or more.

Judie: Yeah.... That's a struggle. They're sort of unaware of the deficiencies in their courses. And it's hard to help them understand how much better the students would do if they could change some of their faculty-focused materials into student-centered active learning projects or activities.

Rebecca: I can imagine that no matter whether it's a HyFlex, or just moving to online, anytime you're changing, and now you're re-looking at the class as a whole, we don't always do that. This forces us to have to look at it and a lot of faculty don't have training necessarily in teaching. And so maybe someone that's been teaching for a long time, now they're like, "Oh, we're having some assistance in moving into something, someone else is taking a look at it, I need to get familiar." So there's a lift of having to get from familiar with learning science, then getting familiar with a new modality, whether it's online or face-to-face, it really could be either. And then on top of that layering in an idea of HyFlex, which they've never experienced as a student.

Judie: Yeah, and some of these particular people probably have never taken an online course either. So they have very limited exposure to much of this, they may have strong opinions about it, but they don't really have any personal experience of it. So that can be a little challenging.

Rebecca: I can imagine it being a really exciting experience, trying to set something like this up, but also like a real brain puzzle in some ways. As someone who doesn't really teach online, I teach mostly in person, I can imagine the complexity of that. And when I'm teaching in person, and I don't have people also online or in other places that I'm also having to worry about, we can easily make a decision in class, "Oh, we're all struggling with this, we're going to pause in what we already have planned..."

Judie: Right.

Rebecca: ...to do this other thing. So I can imagine that that ends up being much more of a challenge, or that flexibility in that way becomes a challenge in a HyFlex course.

Judie: Right. So part of what we encourage and what we've seen, especially in paralegal, the faculty do is start the semester before they want to be in HyFlex. And they'll be in there face-to-face classrooms and they'll say, "Okay, next week, how about if half a dozen of you stay home and try to log in and join the class from home." And so they've practiced incrementally week to week, got used to seeing themselves on camera, hearing their voice in the video, and managing the students that are accessing the course remotely. And other faculty have been practicing just using Zoom as just a recording tool to make small informational videos. So they're getting more familiar with the Zoom software and recording and all of that. So I think all those little steps that people take, before they start the HyFlex helps a lot too. And they're always invited to stop in to watch a live HyFlex course and see how the instructor is managing. And frankly, part of what our team recommended at the end of our work was that, particularly, new HyFlex instructors have some sort of technical person in the room with them for the first few weeks until they feel confident that they can manage this on their own. Unfortunately, that recommendation requires funding that we don't have at this time. But that is the hope, that one day faculty would not have to worry about that layer of the technical aspect and know that there's somebody in there to support them

John: ...until they get comfortable themselves.

Judie: Right now, when they start it up we'll try to walk by or they know who they can call. But it's a little bit different when somebody's standing right there and can help them.

Rebecca: It just provides this whole layer... like anxiety just goes away... someone else will solve this problem and I can just deal with the other things that come up in the first day of class that aren't technical issues.

Judie: rRight.

John: One can only wish. [LAUGHTER] But, going back to Rebecca's point, I think one of the difficulties for people, especially those transitioning from face-to-face to a HyFlex format is that in face-to-face classes, you're used to be able to adjust on the fly so that if students are stuck, you can stretch something out; if they're able to pick something up more quickly, you could accelerate some things. But those teaching online are already used to a structured format where the tasks for the week are set in advance; students know where they're going to be. So it seems like that would be a more natural transition. But I could see some problems in adjusting the first time you're doing this in terms of coming to class expecting to have a whole class period worth of activities, and students either get stuck on something and you're not able to finish it in that class period, or students just breezed right through it, they picked things up really quickly and they're ready to move on or to leave. Have people had many issues with that.

Judie: These are courses people have taught before. So it's not like they're going through this material with students for the first time. So they know where the stumbling blocks are for the students. And they're pretty prepared, they'd schedule in extra time for those content parts that students need extra time with. And honestly, there's nothing wrong with having a scheduled course and with your online component and then decide to make a change and then post that in the online part of the course for the people who aren't attending right on the spot. So I think that may not be as much of an issue as it may seem.

John: If people are having trouble with it in face-to-face classes, it's likely it's also a bit of a stumbling block for the online classes so that alignment between the two might make it easier to identify those issues and adjust the pacing, particularly for future iterations of the course, too.

Judie: I teach online, and I can see when students are struggling with something and I can send out a clarifying announcement or add some additional content or extend a deadline. And there's no reason you couldn't do the same thing in a HyFlex course,

John: Are some courses better suited to HyFlex, and others. How do faculty decide if HyFlex is right for their courses,

Judie: it all just comes back to the learning outcomes. If you have some sort of a course, where students can do a lot of independent work that might be ideal for HyFlex, if you want students to work in small groups a lot, there's really no problem with that in HyFlex either. I would say big challenges would be if you had wet labs and things like that, that are difficult nuts to crack in the online only format too. And some courses, honestly, I think don't need to be HyFlex. There's nothing wrong with just offering them 100% online, if students are just engaging with the material and kind of doing independent work. But really the beauty of HyFlex is that the students can be 100% asynchronous, but still be part of that community and they can see the class and they can feel like they're part of the group and they can interact with the students. It's just so important that all that is built in correctly from the start, that the student-to-student engagement is all built in. Because I think that when we tell students, if we advertise that you can take the course from wherever you are anytime of the day and have an equivalent learning experience, and then when they get into that experience, they're not feeling engaged, and they're not communicating with the other students. I just think that we can do a lot to recruit students. But really, it's once they're in the course and having that experience, that's what's going to retain our students and help them be successful and stay with the program. So it's just a matter of ensuring that all those pieces are built in so that the students aren't isolated and they're not passive learners. One of the pitfalls that I think people fall into is they think that all I have to do is lecture and we're going to throw that video in the class. And then that's good enough, the students can watch my lecture, and they're going to know what they need to know. And we'll move on. And that's just a huge issue, because that's just passive learning on the part of the student and they're not engaged and they may have it on and be washing the dishes or doing other activities and it's just not a good learning experience for students. There has to be that attachment, that engagement, has to be built in to make sure that students are successful and feel like they're part of the learning community.

John: It's's also a requirement for federal funding too, that there'll be some degree of interactivity in the classes.

Judie: And we use the OSCQR rubric, that's the Open SUNY course quality rubric that OLC, the Online Learning Consortium has also adopted. And it's one of the requirements in OSCQR too, that the students have active learning and student-to-student interaction.

John: One practical thing that you touched on a bit earlier, but I think might be worth emphasizing a bit, is that with demographic shifts, which have lowered the number of college-age students in many areas, particularly in community colleges, this provides a way of offering courses where there may not be enough students face-to-face or online for the courses to carry. And it provides a way of maintaining a larger variety of courses that might not work at any one of the campus centers.

Judie: Yeah, that's exactly right. For years, we've had what we call video linked courses. So you could be in the main campus and link it to one of the campus centers where they might have six or seven students. And we may have six or seven students in ours, but together, it's enough to have the course run. And so that works pretty well. And in some instances, I think faculty have thought maybe they would turn a course into a HyFlex course, and then decided that really all they need is a video linked course, so that their students don't have to drive to campus but they're all participating at the same time. And that's absolutely fine. There's nothing wrong with a video linked course. And some people think that they may want to offer their course HyFlex, because they want to record their lectures and have them all in the course. And basically all they really want is lecture capture to have as a resource to subsidize what the students are already doing. And there's nothing wrong with that either. It's just not a HyFlex course.

John: But this type, of course, would seem to benefit a lot of students who might not be able to take the other formats...

Judie: Exactly.

John: ...the students who have more challenging schedules, people doing shift work, or who are taking care of ill parents or relatives, or who just can't have a regular schedule. Are there other students who might benefit besides those who can't meet synchronous times regularly?

Judie: Well, the students who are not in the area, really. We do have online learners from all over the place. Occasionally, we'll have an international student who has to go back home for a time for whatever reason, and you know, that would be excellent for a student like that, who's starting off on campus, and then having to move elsewhere geographically later on. But yeah, it is good for what we call, in air quotes, are truly distant learners, then they can participate in a HyFlex course just like they would in any other online course.

John: Or even sometimes distance students, those who are in the National Guard and may get called away for a few weeks, or who might travel a lot for work.

Rebecca: There probably are some challenges that do arise. Have you had any experiences where there's maybe not enough synchronous students to do synchronous activities? Like too many students maybe have decided to just be online or be asynchronous? So what about that inconsistency there? One week, there might be a lot of people synchronous. And then another week, nobody's there.

Judie: You're absolutely right. A couple years ago, I was helping out a new adjunct who was trying this out for the first time, and he only had one student in the room when I was in there helping them get started. And then a second student came in and all the rest of them were online. So in that kind of situation, it would be tough to do a group project in the classroom. And I think that could be problematic. And you'd have to, depending on what you're using, like Zoom has a groups tool. So if they're all tuned in at the same time, you can easily put all your virtual students in small groups with each other. The tougher problem, I think would be when you want to do the group projects, and then all of your students decide to be asynchronous, because that can be a little bit trickier. And you need a little bit more time. So one of our recommendations was to schedule a HyFlex courses that only meet once a week, or twice a week at the most. Because if you think about what you have to do as the asynchronous student, so if you have a monday, wednesday course, on Monday night, they've got to try to watch that recording and do all that work. So Tuesday, do whatever reading and prep to get ready for the Wednesday course, it would be tough to try to fit in a small group asynchronous project too. And I also think that with HyFlex, it's kind of like a catch 22, because you need to schedule the course. Typically, our cap is 32, because we have 32 desks in a room. So now you're scheduling for 32. And you only have three, and you still have this big empty classroom and maybe another class could have been scheduled at that time. But the minute you try to move it into a smaller location, what if all 32 show up? You always have to be ready to have the 32 students, regardless of how many show up.

John: In economics, we call that a peak-load problem... that you have to be able to meet the peak demand period.

Rebecca: HyFlex is just more resource intensive in general, because you have to support all those things all at once. Right?

Judie: Yeah, absolutely. I think it is resource intensive. And I don't think it's for every faculty member. But the people who've been doing it for the last couple of years really seem to enjoy it. And so I know the Director of our Paralegal Program is just thrilled that now she has a course that last year at this time was in danger of being cancelled from low enrollment. And now she's got 25 students in it, and it's HyFlex. And that's exactly what she was going for. And as she grows more comfortable with it and adds more resources and other materials to the online part of the course, the course becomes more robust each time she does it.

Rebecca: Do faculty get additional resources if they're doing a HyFlex class, because now they have to be constantly checking their online version of their class as well as the in-person? You kind of mentioned that it's almost like having two preps? How was that accommodated for faculty?

Judie: I think it is two preps, honestly, and how faculty are accommodated or compensated for it is something that's always under discussion between our faculty and our union and the administration. Currently, there's no additional compensation for a HyFlex course... down the road, hopefully some of that can change. But right now, it's just considered one course.

John: Could you give us an example of some private projects or activities that might be done in classes, where students are getting the same learning objectives in different formats?

Judie: Well, one of our team members, her name is Karen Wicka, and she teaches criminal justice. And she has not taught HyFlex yet, but she's preparing right now to do so in the spring. And she's already been working on her schedule. And she said that she does a lot of debates in their criminal justice classes. And she sees now in the face-to-face class that she has students who struggle with the debate because they're really not comfortable speaking in front of their classmates and having all the attention on them. So now in her face-to-face class, she'll say "The debate is Thursday, and you have to be prepared, and if you do not come to class on Thursday, then before we meet again next Tuesday, you have to turn in an essay..." and she gives you the parameters of the essay, which would be the alternative assignment. And she said she would easily transfer that to the HyFlex course so that the students who are participating synchronously virtually or in the class room would all be having the debate and the asynchronous online students would be writing the essay.

John: So it has some aspects of universal design to it, that you're providing multiple formats and multiple means of people demonstrating their competency on these particular skills.

Judie: Exactly. And the students in the HyFlex, they'll be able to look ahead and say, "Gee, there's a debate, two months from now, I don't need to get stressed out about it, I can choose to stay online that week and write the essay," or "Gee, that's an essay, I'm not comfortable writing the essay, I'm much more articulate. So I'm going to go to the class and I'll participate in the debate."

Rebecca: I can imagine that that would motivate some students to just make choices like "Oh, I really want to be in class for this," whatever it's going to be or that I'm going to schedule my life around this particular couple of times when I want to be in class, and then also make choices about "I would really like to avoid that."

Judie: Exactly. That's why I think that schedule at the beginning is so important, so that students can make those choices and make those plans.

Rebecca: I can imagine that with all the time and energy that would need to go into the HyFlex course the thing that would draw faculty in the first place is probably the rewarding experience of students having such a positive experience or having positive outcomes. Is that what you think motivates most of the faculty? Or is there something else also.

Judie: I think that has a big part of it, because we see students who we know they want to come to class, and they can't because of different life situations. So definitely the faculty want to see the students be able to be successful, no matter what kind of format you have to teach the course in. And honestly, I do think that declining enrollment has something to do with it also, because we are trying to find more ways to reach more students. And we're trying to reach out to adults who want to change their careers or have never been able to finish college in the past. And this could be a way that they could continue working their full-time jobs and still participate in courses. Some people honestly like the technology, and they just want to try all different things. So yeah, I think there's a lot of different motivating factors. But definitely, the faculty generally have the students' best interest at heart and they want to do whatever they can to help the students be successful and meet their goals.

Rebecca: Of course, embedded in my question, was the assumption that students are responding positively. [LAUGHTER] Can you talk a little bit about how students are actually responding.

Judie: Yeah, the students... they are happy to be able to have the choice. And students have commented on different things like some have said, "I thought I would just stay in the classroom. But as I got comfortable with the learning materials and the format, then it was easier for me to stay home and just tune in virtually." And where we live in western New York, especially in the spring semester where it's, you know, January, February, March, the weather's so bad that it's great for students to be able to stay in a safe location, and not have to drive to campus. And those students particularly are happy to have that choice. So if we wake up in the morning, and there's a whiteout or something, and in being in such a big region, we can have a whiteout in one county and have a sunny day in another county, then they're still expected to come to school. So the students don't have to take those risks of driving in bad weather. But, yeah, they have responded favorably. We've also had students who thought they would stay online and then saw what was going on in the classroom and really felt like they wanted to be there and be able to participate live with the group. So they came to campus more often than they had planned. So I think it works both ways. But they definitely like the choice. There were surveys that I read in one of the articles that are mentioned in the resources list, where students were more satisfied with the class, just knowing there were those options, whether they took advantage of them or not. So the students definitely are pleased with that.

Rebecca: I can imagine that for students who are a little bit tentative about returning to school, or going to school for the first time as an adult maybe, that online learning can be really intimidating. So, getting to know your faculty in person and having some exchanges with students, I could understand that first student you're discussing, like the idea that I have an experience in class, and now I feel comfortable being online, or those that felt really confident that they could be online and maybe it just wasn't a format that they were familiar with. They could go in person, get some feedback, or get some help where they feel stuck, get un-stuck and then go back online.

Judie: Right. Yeah, I think that's good ...that flexibility.

John: In several of our recent podcasts, including those by Linda Nilson on specifications grading and on self-regulated learning, and the podcast with Sarah Rose Cavanagh, where she was talking about the role of emotions, a concept that's come up quite a bit is the notion that students tend to learn more when they have a greater degree of autonomy, and this type of class environment seems to provide that. And that's very consistent with what you were just saying, I think.

Judie: Well, I think any of us, as humans, we like to know we have options, because things happen. You just may not feel well one day and not feel up to the drive. And then now you know, you don't have that pressure to make the drive no matter what, you can still stay home and earn the A where you would have been penalized, otherwise, if you didn't show up to class,

John: As part of the planning for the HyFlex courses, what types of support are being provided by the college?

Judie: Well, we have a team that works together with the faculty, we have myself as the instructional designer, and we do have a person who is an accessibility technologist, and that helps a lot. We have media, our media department, and our librarians will help out with any resources that we need. And our computer services people will also work with faculty, if they need particular software, things like that. Our media people will work with the faculty one-on-one in the classroom that they're going to use. So they have some mandatory training before the class starts. And we already said that they become familiar with Zoom ahead of time, but we will activate it, you know, fire it up in the room prior to the course starting so they are used to where they should stand and what the cameras are picking up and what the students will see from their view. We also have a group of faculty who are really interested in sharing ideas and supporting each other. So that is our HyFlex Users Group, which is the "HUG." [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: That's cute.

Judie: So, yeah, I think that's cute. But they that way they can talk about what's working well and particularly the nuances in the different classrooms. If you're sharing the same room and you know that this particular microphone isn't working very well or whatever, or picking up too many student noises, then that's the kind of information you can readily share with each other. So it's good. It's nice that there's some faculty like cross-departmentally working together to solve some of the technical problems and to support each other as they try to do this, because it is a lot to take on. But I think they find it rewarding in the end.

John: Very good. Well, this has been fascinating. And I think this is something that probably more and more colleges would adopt and it seems like you're probably a little ahead of the curve on this as compared to many other campuses.

Judie: Well, the articles... some of the research that I read has come out... It's Brian Beatty, who wrote, I thin, what we think of as the seminal article about HyFlex, and they came out in 2014. And he was doing it before then. And some of the research that he refers to was even earlier than that. So I think it's probably been around a good 15 to 20 years, but is really starting to take off now as the technology becomes more readily available. And students have this equipment, you know, you can Zoom from your phone, they don't need that much of a setup, if they're comfortable with the devices that we have now. But yeah, I think it's great. I'm glad that it's an option. I like seeing that we have full programs going this way so that a student doesn't just start off in an introductory course. And then they're left high and dry when they can't access the rest of the courses to finish their program. So the commitment, I think by these program directors to do their full program HyFlex is just great, so that the students know when they come in the door that they can really finish the entire program and be successful. So I think our next thing is to get some of the general education requirements online because the programs that are online now are AAS programs. So they're applied associates where students are preparing for the workforce. But I think if we can get some transfer programs and general electives in the HyFlex format that could be helpful.

Rebecca: Yeah, it sounds like an exciting time and some interesting things getting developed. I can imagine that, from your seat, it can be kind of interesting seeing the different kinds of classes evolving, and what's working and what's not working.

Judie: That is interesting. Sometimes as an instructional designer, you can get bogged down in watching somebody's video or you start reading these articles like "Oh, I didn't know that about.... Well, wait a minute, what am I supposed to be working on here?" [LAUGHTER] But we've seen it over the years with online... and so many courses and programs are online and I think that's wonderful because you have access from wherever you are. But for the students who really want more of the community experience in the classroom, I think HyFlex is a good choice for them.

John: I think that one thing that makes it easier from the faculty side is that there are so many workshops online and so many meetings that are being run through Zoom or other systems, that faculty are just necessarily getting more used to that type of interaction. So that should make the transition a little bit easier for many people.

Rebecca: ...or even that type of flexibility, like attending a department meeting virtually is becoming a thing.

John: We've done that many times. We had a member who is in Pennsylvania for much of last year and so she came in through Zoom. We've also used it for all of our workshops here that where nearly every workshop is available through Zoom. And we have a lot of faculty attending remotely. So that familiarity is growing.

Judie: Yeah, I think it's good. And I think as far as administration goes, or while you're planning, looking ahead to course scheduling and program scheduling, you just have to think about who are your adult learners? They're you and me, they're your neighbor and your brother, and they can't drop everything and run to the classroom and sit there from 10 to 2, or 8 to 11 or whatever it is. They have to be able to have that flexibility if they're going to stay with the program and finish it. So I think it's great.
"

Rebecca: Well, we always wrap up by asking, "Well, what's next?"

Judie: What's next in the world of HyFlex?.

John: ...or in general for you.

Rebecca: ...for you.

Judie: For me, we've got a lot of different projects going on in our area. We have an Accessibility STARS program, we call it. We're trying to create different modules to help faculty and staff be able to create accessible digital content from the start instead of trying to retrofit everything for accessibility later on. So that's exciting. We have that about a third of the way completed right now. And I think that'll be a good program. We're also working a lot on open pedagogy projects and trying to get some of our faculty working with students online to develop their e-portfolios and different things like that through the SUNY Creative Grant.

John: The IITG grant.

Judie: Yeah, that is based at SUNY Oneonta. So that's exciting too. I know you guys are working on that also.

John: We now have 10 faculty members who've joined into that.

Judie: Yeah, that's great. And SUNY Geneseo is also involved.

Rebecca: Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's really interesting.

Judie: Thanks for having me and thanks for sharing tea.

John: Thank you, Judie. It's always great having you here. We'll have to get you back for some future podcasts too.

Judie: Sure....

[MUSIC]

John: If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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John: The traditional college model of full-time face-to-face class attendance does not work well for people with difficult work schedules, those that live at a distance from campus, or who face other barriers to attending classes on campus. In this episode, we examine how the HyFlex course modality can break down these barriers and allow more people to realize their potential.

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Why did I go HyFlex?
2. I have students who work full time, travel for work, have families, etc. Many were having to miss class for legitimate reasons. I tried "make up" assignments, but they weren't accomplishing what I wanted. So I moved more and more toward online learning.

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Thread by @ClaireHMajor: This weekend, I posted a Tweet about the approach I took to my "College and University Teaching" course this term. Several of you had reques...

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Thread by @ClaireHMajor: This weekend, I posted a Tweet about the approach I took to my "College and University Teaching" course this term. Sou had requests for more information and questions about how this worked. So I'm going to try to respond here. Ca...

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Many of us have had to sit through boring, less than engaging lectures in a classroom. The speaker seems bolted to the floor, drones on and on in a monotone voice, and shares visuals that consist of nothing but slide after slide of bullet-point text. We know a bad lecture when we experience it. But we also know a good lecture when we see one. The speaker may vary tone and pitch, have exciting slides with interesting pictures, graphs, or charts, and keep us involved in the talk through a variety of strategies, including asking questions whether rhetorical or otherwise.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all of us have found ourselves teaching in virtual classrooms. Many of us still have a message and content that we need to communicate, however, and we are trying to figure out new ways to do that in a virtual learning environment. One of those ways is video conferencing. Because we haven't seen many video conference lectures, good or bad, it can bring uncertainty as to how to go about teaching from home when the students aren't in the same location and when our interactions are mediated by technology.

We have an even greater responsibility to capture student attention with physical distance separating us in this classroom-to-virtual transition. The good news is you can indeed deliver compelling video lectures by way of video conferencing that communicate important information while holding your students' interest. If you choose to lecture via video conferencing, consider it your job to invite students to engage. There are several ways to go about this.

Use your voice as a tool of engagement.

When you offer an e-lecture, speak expressively and share your passion for the topic with students. This goal can be challenging for some of us to achieve, especially those of us who are more introverted, but you can also use emotive words to convey expressions, for example: "I'm happy to see you" or "I'm so glad we have a chance to talk about this important topic."

You can also vary your speaking rate as well as the volume of your voice to help students pay attention and to motivate them to listen. And you can give verbal signposts to help students follow the structure of your lecture: "Today we will cover three main points. Our first point is...The second main point is. Third, and our final main point, is..."

Remember that visuals matter.

When you use a video conferencing tool, students will see you when you talk. Most video conferencing programs also allow you to share a whiteboard with students so that you have the ability to write as you would on a whiteboard in a classroom. It can be a great tool for doing a quick illustration, but you should keep this practice to a minimum, however, as too much time on the whiteboard can become boring.

You can also choose to share your screen with students, which allows you to use a slide deck. The same tips that apply to in-person slide presentations apply in a video conference. Consider the following points.

Less is more. Your slide should not convey your message in full. It should instead contain a key word or phrase to support your message. Consider the effectiveness of the following two slides for example.

Visual slides can be more effective than text-focused ones. We tend to process visual information more quickly and efficiently than verbal information. Thus, when possible, choose a visual image over text. See the following slides and consider which is the more efficient form of communication:

Fonts Matter. Some fonts, particularly sans serif fonts, are easier to read on screen than others. Font size matters, as well. Common advice is that you should use at least 24-point font size, but remember that you'll be sharing a screen with other things, including images of you, students, and the slides, so as far as font goes, the bigger the better.

You have options other than slides. Most video conferencing programs provide you with an option to write on a virtual whiteboard. If you use it, be sure to write clearly and make sure everything is legible. You can also hold up physical objects or artifacts as effective visuals.

Give students active learning tasks that help keep their attention focused during your talk time.

Students often have trouble paying attention while in a physical classroom, and this is only compounded by working from their own environments, which may contain a host of potential distractions, such as snacks, pets, television, or social media. In an online lecture, then, you can "lose" people and not even know it. We suggest stopping about every 10 to 15 minutes and ask students to do something, in order to check for attention or understanding. This can include prompts such as responding to a question in chat, "raising their hands" to contribute, or signaling whether they are following the talk by choosing an emoticon such as a thumbs up, or answering a poll question.

Consider these activities during a synchronous/video conferenced lecture:

Last, we encourage you to beware of "Zoombombers," or uninvited individuals who infiltrate a session to spew hate speech or show vulgar content. Zoom has a blog post about how to keep potential party crashers out of your class:

https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/03/20/keep-the-party-crashers-from-crashing-your-zoom-event/ . One of the best strategies is to maintain control of screensharing. You can also manage settings so that only invited participants can join the session.

Video lectures can be just as effective as an in-classroom setting if you understand the nuances of what makes an engaging e-classroom setup. We hope these virtual classroom tips help ease your classroom-to-virtual transition.

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Creating Engaging Synchronous Online Lectures - The K. Patricia Cross Academy

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With the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all of us have found ourselves teaching in virtual classrooms. Because we haven't seen many video conference lectures, good or bad, it can bring uncertainty as to how to go about teaching from home when the students aren't in the same location and when our interactions are mediated by technology.

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New at the blog: Summary of a research article about the hyflex model of instruction. While limited, the study gives a good look at a hyflex setup and has some interesting things to tell us. #hyflex #onlinelearning  https://t.co/hga2dl4PSn

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New at the blog: Summary of a research article about the hyflex model of instruction. While limited, the study gives a good look at a hyflex setup and has some interesting things to tell us. #hyflex #onlinelearning  https://t.co/hga2dl4PSn

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New at the blog: Summary of a research article about the hyflex model of instruction. While limited, the study gives a good look at a hyflex setup and has some interesting things to tell us. #hyflex #onlinelearning https://t.co/hga2dl4PSn
— Robert Talbert (@RobertTalbert) May 8, 2020

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New at the blog: Summary of a research article about the hyflex model of instruction. While limited, the study gives a good look at a hyflex setup and has some interesting things to tell us. #hyflex #onlinelearning  https://t.co/hga2dl4PSn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
New at the blog: Summary of a research article about the hyflex model of instruction. While limited, the study gives a good look at a hyflex setup and has some interesting things to tell us. #hyflex #onlinelearning  https://t.co/hga2dl4PSn

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New at the blog: Summary of a research article about the hyflex model of instruction. While limited, the study gives a good look at a hyflex setup and has some interesting things to tell us. #hyflex #onlinelearning  https://t.co/hga2dl4PSn

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Research report: Experiencing the hyflex model

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We look at a research study examining student choices and motivations in a hybrid-flexible or “hyflex” course and find some surprising results.

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Fall Scenario #13: A HyFlex Model | Inside Higher Ed

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http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/resources/files/CourseTransformationGuide_CWSEI_CU-SEI.pdf

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This site provides you with a rubric of competencies around online teaching. The first column, "Muddler," is for instructors with little to no experience with online teaching. The second column, "Meddler," is when you've had some experience, the last column, "Moodler," is for those instructors with more online teaching experience. Take a look and see where you are at and where you'd like to improve.

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These "competencies" give you an idea of what you might want to focus on before, during, and after your course.

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Resource list put together by the twitter world.

Includes ideas such as:
1. Using Zoom to Replicate Face-to-Face Instructor Support in Flipped Digital Skills Classes

2. Videoconferencing Alternatives: How Low-Bandwidth Teaching Will Save Us All

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Tons of resources - you'll have to scroll through to find what interests you.

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Sponsored by World101 and Listenwise

Disclaimer 1: This post was written in the Spring of 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 outbreak, so a lot of the information here is discussed through the lens of distance learning launched by a global pandemic. I have attempted to broaden the lens beyond our current situation to take other distance-learning situations into account.

Disclaimer 2: I recommend quite a few tech tools in this post. Before you proceed with them, please check with your district to make sure the tools comply with your specific use policies for age, privacy, etc.

If you've found yourself teaching in a distance-learning situation, especially if it's been foisted upon you by circumstance, you'll discover pretty quickly that distance learning offers different challenges from face-to-face instruction. And if you look online, you'll find tons of ideas and resources that can help you tackle those challenges, so much that it's easy to get paralyzed at the volume of it all. This is especially true if you're expected to hit the ground running with very little notice.

To help you, I'm going to take my best shot at sharing clear, carefully curated information on distance learning. We'll do this in four parts:

In Part 1 I'll address your head and your heart, the very real, valid emotional and psychological factors that may be preventing you from doing a decent job with online learning.

In Part 2 we'll get into the nuts and bolts of distance learning, options for content delivery, different ways students can demonstrate learning, and some of the tech that can make it all work.

In Part 3 I'll share some general tips and advice I've gathered from teachers in the field.

And in Part 4 we'll talk about troubleshooting, solving some of the more specific problems that come up often when we talk about online learning.

PART 1: START WITH YOUR HEAD AND YOUR HEART

None of the practical stuff is going to do any of us much good if we're in a distracted, panicked headspace and haven't tended to the ways our current situation has impacted our emotions. Here are three things you can do to get your head and heart in a better place.

Get Perspective

There will likely be times when the people in charge of you start to expect too much, or you expect too much of yourself. If you're in a situation like the one we happen to be in right now, in the spring of 2020, you may need to regularly step back from what's right in front of you and remember that we're dealing with life and death circumstances right now. None of this is normal, and there really is no precedent to follow. Most people are doing the best they can on any given day, and that means things will not go smoothly. And by "people," I mean everyone: students, parents, your colleagues, your administration, your family members, and you. YOU. Giving yourself plenty of grace is key at times like this.

If you need something to help you regain perspective and cut yourself some slack, read Carolyn Todd's editorial, Is Anyone Else Just Barely Functioning Right Now?

Now if you personally have a cool, level head at the moment, but someone else is pressuring you to do more, keep in mind that they are feeling their own unique pressure to perform, and they're passing that on to you. It may be an opportunity to validate their feelings, or it may be time to push back on expectations that are simply unreasonable.

Get Physical

When things start to feel like too much, start moving. Decades of research has pointed to the link between physical activity and brain function, but most of us don't need research to know that some of our best ideas come to us when we change things up and go for a walk, a run, or a bike ride. This is especially important during times when we are more likely to be cooped up in our homes, such as, say, a quarantine imposed by a global pandemic.

Get with Other People

One of the things that has really overwhelmed me in the process of putting this post together is knowing that everyone's situation is a little different and not having the tools to address each situation.

One way to alleviate this is to get in touch with others who are more familiar with your specific needs. Apart from collaborating with your colleagues, a great way to share ideas is to find and join online groups. Two I'm recommending here are on Facebook. If you're not on Facebook, I strongly suggest you set up an account just for the purpose of collaborating with others.

Dealing with Educational Inequities in Distance/Online Learning: This group was created "in response to the growing list of resources and practices during the COVID-19 shutdown that further increase the educational divide as it relates to accessibility; race; socio-economic status; gender; and other marginalized communities. We want to demonstrate real solutions in distance/online learning that can provide solutions for all learners."

PART 2: THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF ONLINE LEARNING

Online learning has so many components to it; each one could honestly get its own whole blog post. Since I can't go too in-depth all at once, I'll just do an overview of all the pieces and link out to a few resources that can help you learn more about each one.

1. CONNECTING AND COMMUNICATING WITH STUDENTS

It's essential that you have clear, consistent, accessible channels for communicating with your students. Different pathways for communication will need to be established. The first two are essential and asynchronous, meaning participants can access the conversation whenever it's convenient; they don't need to be present at the same time. The third pathway is optional and is usually synchronous, meaning participants must "attend" the conversation at the same time.

Must Have: Outgoing Communication asynchronous On this pathway, you give instructions, post announcements, and generally inform your students about what's going on and what's expected of them. Some teachers are creating daily or weekly videos for this purpose, while others are writing out instructions in places like Google Docs, and others are doubling up-pairing short videos with written instructions so students get the information through different modes.

It seems like one of the most important considerations with outgoing communication is that you keep it consistent: Pick one place to deliver and store outgoing messages and stick with that, so students know where to look, nothing gets lost in the mix, and no one gets overwhelmed with information overload.

Must Have: Incoming Communication asynchronous This pathway is for students and parents to reach out to you with questions, feedback, and updates on their ability to complete required work.

Nice to Have: Two-Way Communication
synchronous OR asynchronous On this pathway, you and your students can communicate back and forth in a more open dialogue, where you broadcast yourself live and students attend as participants in one-on-one, small-group, or whole-class sessions.

Video conferencing: For this pathway, many teachers are using video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Hangouts Meet, and Microsoft Teams. These can be great for community-building and giving students a sense of connectedness with you and each other.

It's important to note that these platforms also have their pitfalls, one of which is that they may directly violate your school's privacy policies, so be sure to check with the people in your district who are in charge of compliance with those policies to make sure you're ok. This article from Edsurge does a good job of explaining the potential problems with video conferencing; it focuses specifically on Zoom, but the concepts would apply to any video conferencing tool.

This infographic, created by the Celina High School SWAT Team in Celina, TX, and their advisor, Tisha Poncio, offers tips for students when participating in video conferences:

Alternatives to Video Conferencing: If you've decided not to go the video conferencing route for now, you can still set up text-based discussions that can get students interacting:

Discussion boards: Many platforms, like Google Classroom, Blackboard, Edmodo, and Microsoft Teams, give you the option to set up ongoing, text-based discussions on individual topics. You can make these optional, open for students to ask questions on their work, or make participation a required part of students' grades.

Backchannel discussion: If you'd like something that feels more dynamic and "live," try a backchannel discussion, which can happen at a set time (synchronous) or stay open for a longer period of time to allow students to participate when it's convenient for them (asynchronous). You can open up a text-based chat room in YoTeach (which is very similar to the now-defunct TodaysMeet). If your students are 13 years or older, you could also set them up on Voxer, which allows them to use voice or text to carry on discussions.

2. KEEPING EVERYTHING ORGANIZED

Ideally, you and your colleagues will have chosen a single platform for storing and delivering assignments, collecting student work, posting announcements, and so on. Many schools are already set up on a learning management system (LMS) like Google Classroom, Canvas, Blackboard, or Edmodo. If you don't already have something in place, and you don't have time to learn a new platform, it's probably not a good idea to jump into anything new.

But creating a central hub should be a priority. What parents and students are saying most often is that it's incredibly stressful to have to keep up with multiple platforms and multiple streams of information, with some pieces coming through email, others through Remind, others through an LMS, and so on. With more than one child at home and more than one teacher per child, things can get out of hand very fast. It's perfectly fine to use different tools as part of your instruction-you might assign Quizlet flashcards, Edpuzzle lessons, Newsela articles-but for communication, keep things as streamlined as possible.

One simple approach taken by some schools is to maintain a single document (usually a Google Doc) for the whole school. In that document are links to individual documents for each teacher.

This type of document-which is just a really simple hyperdoc -creates a central hub where parents and students can start every single time, then click over to the places where they can find updated information for their classes. Even if you don't use this specific model, setting up something like it will make your whole school run more smoothly.

Individual teachers can then replicate this type of hub for their own classes, creating a central folder or file where students can find daily or weekly assignments and other communications.

3. LESSON DESIGN

Entire degree programs have been created to show teachers how to design lessons for online learning, and I wasn't able to delve into this enough for this post. What I did find are two resources that you might find helpful without getting another master's degree:

One principle that I've seen in several discussions of online learning is the idea that it works better when you give students some choices, choices in how they take information in and choices in how they demonstrate learning. The next two sections will share some possibilities for both of those.

4. OPTIONS FOR DELIVERING CONTENT

One of the main things you need to do when setting up online instruction is figuring out how students are actually going to take in the content. You have a few options, and it's a good idea to not just stick to one avenue, since you ideally want to give students multiple modes of intake.

Readings

Google Docs or Microsoft Word Files: As long as you remember to manage the security settings on these so they can't be edited, these kinds of files are perfectly fine to use as reading materials.

Regular PDFs: One advantage of using PDFs is that you generally don't have to worry about them being altered by the student, and things like fonts and other design elements will be preserved no matter what device a student is using.

PDFs with Annotation Tools: Several tools like Edji and Kami allow users to annotate PDFs, which would make a great close-reading assignment.

Websites: There's a ton of outstanding free content online that would make excellent reading material for class assignments. On CommonLit, Newsela, and Actively Learn, you can find good reading material for many grade levels and subject areas. NewseumED offers fantastic primary sources for history and social studies.

Websites with Customized, Added Layers: With any website at all, you can use Insert Learning to layer on your own instructional content, such as notes, discussion questions, quizzes, and other embedded content.

Videos

Video is a very popular way to deliver content online, because it has the potential to restore the voice and visuals that are lost when we move away from face-to-face instruction. Once you have a good video, you can share it directly with a link or use a tool like Edpuzzle or PlayPosit to build a complete lesson around that video.

You have two options for sourcing your content: use videos that were created by someone else, or create the videos yourself.

Created by Someone Else
Obviously, the internet is absolutely loaded with videos, and using them means you don't have to make them yourself. What's challenging is finding videos that (a) are appropriate for student viewing, and (b) accurately represent the content you want to deliver, in a way that's succinct and maybe even entertaining. Finding videos that meet these criteria can be really time-consuming if you don't know where to look.

To save time, it helps to go to sources that have already proven themselves as creators of high-quality educational videos.

Khan Academy offers a massive library of videos on math, science, and arts & humanities, including history and government, so that would be a great place to start.

Look for YouTube channels created by organizations that already have a strong reputation for good content, like National Geographic, the History Channel, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As with anything else, your colleagues are going to be one of your best sources for finding good stuff, so ask around at school, or find a group on Twitter that can recommend something for you.

Created by You The good thing about creating your own videos is that you have total control over the content. Probably the easiest way to create instructional videos is with screencasting software, which simply records whatever is on your screen while you narrate into a microphone. So you could, for example, create a PowerPoint-based lecture, then just deliver that lecture on your screen and use screencasting software to record it.

Here are two affordable, popular options for screencasting:

Screencastify
screencastify.com
This recorder is built right into Google Chrome, which makes it an incredibly convenient tool for creating on-the-spot screencasts. As of right now, the editing tools are still kind of rudimentary, which means you're not likely to end up with a very polished end product. Still, for many purposes, this tool gets the job done quickly and easily. Watch this video to learn how to use it.

Screencast-o-Matic
screencast-o-matic.com
This popular recorder is one that you download onto your computer, which is slightly less convenient than one that's built into a browser, but the editing features available with the paid plans might make it worth it for you. This video gives you an overview of how it works.

Static Slide Presentation

Slideshows that combine text with appealing visuals can be a nice alternative to text readings. They're also much quicker and easier to create than videos, and viewing them requires a lot less internet bandwidth.

These kinds of slideshows, which students would click through on their own, should ideally be designed with that independent experience in mind. Unlike a presentation that you give live, these would not be simply a support for a speaker; they'd need to stand completely alone, with all the necessary text on the slides, rather than in the speaker notes.

Rather than sharing these as a file, which would require you to adjust editing permissions and would likely result in the student looking at it in editing mode, you can share it in presentation mode so the slides take up the full screen and it feels more like an experience, like in this sample presentation. Learn how to set this up with a Google Slides presentation in the video below:

Audio

Content can also be delivered via audio, which can be a nice change of pace for students who are used to text or videos only, and because audio files are much smaller than video files, they're less likely to strain home internet capabilities.

Listenwise houses a fantastic library of curated, standards-aligned podcasts.

You can find lots of other podcasts on pretty much any topic imaginable. Here are some good ones that are produced specifically for student audiences.

Recording your own audio instructions, reflections, or lectures is simple and quick. You can use a voice recording app on a smartphone or a web-based tool like Online Voice Recorder to create MP3 files, which are just audio files, then upload those files right into whatever platform you're using to distribute information to students. In many cases, students will be able to play them right on that platform.

Interactive Learning Experiences

Some tools have come along in recent years that allow you to create interactive online learning modules, where students click through various instructional components, play games, take interactive quizzes, and so on. Although some activities may not justify the time it takes to put these interactives together, they can offer something different and more fun than the standard fare. You can find these on sites like GoConqr, Deck.Toys, BookWidgets, and Wizer. The one platform that seems to have the most robust collection of options is Genially. Take a look:

5. OPTIONS FOR DEMONSTRATING LEARNING

Just as there are many different ways to get the content into students' heads, you can also offer choices for how students demonstrate their learning. Probably the quickest, most traditional way to measure whether students learned the material is to give them some kind of test or quiz, but that may not be the best way to get students to experience the content in a deep way. Sticking only to tests also favors students who work well in that mode, rather than allowing other students to shine in areas they might be stronger in. Beyond all that, it's not much fun.

On Twitter, I asked teachers for some fresh ideas for "end products," and got tons of ideas back. Below I've listed some really good ones. Before you jump on these, be mindful that these end products still need to align with your instructional goals and are not what we call Grecian Urn assignments, creative-looking projects that don't ultimately have much instructional value.

Book: Students create a children's book, mini-textbook, handbook, comic, or other kind of book. These can be done on paper or created with apps like Book Creator.

Google Tour: Using Google Tour Builder, students can create customized tours that combine photos, text, and targeted locations on Google Earth. These could be used to create tours that explore current events, historical periods or phenomena, science or geography topics, global research topics, students' personal histories or future plans, or completely fictionalized stories that take place in various locations around the world.

Infographic: On paper or using a tool like Piktochart, have students create an infographic to represent or teach about an idea or set of data.

Lesson: Have students write their own lesson on a chunk of your content. Provide them with the basic structure of a lesson to follow, including objectives, direct instruction, guided practice, and some sort of assessment to measure their success.

Model: Students can create a physical model representing some aspect of your curriculum, then photograph it from various angles or create a video tour of the model with their own narration.

Museum or Multimedia Collection: Have students curate a collection of artifacts representing a curricular concept, along with their own written captions, in a Google Slides presentation. Two fantastic resources for gathering these artifacts are the Smithsonian Learning Lab and the Google Arts & Culture website.

Podcast: Have students use the recording tools mentioned in the "Audio" section above or an app like Anchor to record a podcast where they express an opinion, tell a story, or teach about a content-related topic. If students have a lot of material, they can break their podcast into multiple episodes and do a series instead.

Scavenger Hunt: Have students participate in a content-based scavenger hunt and take photos to record their findings. An app like GooseChase can make this even more fun.

Sketchnote: Have students create a sketchnote to represent a content-related topic using paper or with a drawing app like Sketchpad.

Video: Students can create their own videos as creative, informative, persuasive, or reflective pieces. These can be public service announcements, commercials, mini-documentaries, instructional videos, short feature films or animations, or TED-style talks. Tools for creating these can range from quick response platforms like Flipgrid, to screencasting tools listed in the previous section, a tool that creates stop motion videos like Stop Motion Studio, or simple online video creators like Adobe Creative Cloud Express.

Website: Using tools like Weebly, Wix, or Google Sites, have students develop a website to document a long-term project or teach about a particular idea.

PART 3: GENERAL TIPS AND ADVICE FROM TEACHERS

Begin again.

If distance learning has been introduced suddenly, where it takes the place of face-to-face learning rather than being the standard from the start, treat the beginning of the shift the same way you'd treat the beginning of a school year, by establishing routines and protocols before digging deeply into content, and giving extra energy to rekindling culture and relationships on the new platform even if they were already established in the face-to-face setting.

Keep home responsibilities in mind.

When schools are closed district-wide, all children are out of school and under one roof. This means older kids may be shouldering some responsibility for caring for their younger siblings, and that could impact how well they are able to keep up with deadlines, log in for synchronous events, or respond to communication in a timely manner. Letting students know up front that you get this, and maintaining flexibility with deadlines, can go a long way toward keeping lines of communication open and avoiding misunderstandings.

Make social interaction a priority.

When we are kept apart from one another for whatever reason, our need for human interaction increases. So if you're teaching a distance learning course that was set up that way to begin with, it's important to build in structures to keep students interacting with each other and with you.

This principle is even more vital in situations where distance learning is coupled with large-scale social isolation.

Some of the tools and systems I mentioned earlier, like video conferencing and discussion boards, can meet this need; even your own outgoing video, audio, and written communication can be used for more "human connection" reasons. A good general rule to keep in mind is that you don't need to use 100% of your time for instructional purposes; allowing space for regular conversation, venting, and laughter can be incredibly important.

Keep messaging to a minimum.

I mentioned this earlier, but it's important so I'm repeating it. If kids and parents are receiving multiple messages from multiple teachers every day, and families have multiple kids, they can become overwhelmed really quickly, and things will start slipping through the cracks.

Try to limit the number of platforms you and your school are using for distributing information. Ideally, you'll have one clear channel for sending out announcements and messages, and those will be limited in number. Parents and students will have one place to look for all important information, and that "place" will be clean, simple, easy to navigate, and updated regularly so that all users can count on the information being current. The closer you can get to this ideal, the more smoothly things will go.

PART 4: TROUBLESHOOTING

Two specific problems tend to come up more often than any others when it comes to distance learning. Although neither one is completely solvable, here are some of the ways schools are addressing them:

1. Students Who Do Not Have Home Access to Tech

The whole notion of distance learning becomes a problem if some of your students don't have devices or reliable internet access. Here are some ways to address this problem:

Get more students connected. In a 2017 post, When Your School is Short on Tech, I showcased some ways that schools are getting unconnected families online, including information on how some schools partner with organizations like Kajeet to loan WiFi hotspots out to families. Although some of the solutions may not be relevant to a distance-learning situation, you may find some resources that can be helpful in your community, even if they can't be implemented right away.

Offer non-digital options. Some districts are working around the problem by offering paper resources for pick-up and drop-off. This is how we did distance learning in all the years before the internet, so it's certainly possible to do it again.

Use the phone. If you've tried other avenues and still can't get a hold of some families, a regular phone call might be your best option. If you want to keep your number private, you can set up a Google Voice account, which allows you to call, text, or message another phone without sharing your personal number, or use some of these phone settings to block your regular number. If you are reaching out to families that don't speak your language, try the free TalkingPoints app, which allows you to communicate with them in their language.

Use the mail. Although not ideal or cheap, it may be possible to mail materials back and forth (if you have office staff still going to school each day, they may be able to help with this). Even if instruction isn't possible this way, consider the impact it would make if you took ten minutes to mail a hand-written letter to an otherwise unconnected student, just to let them know you're thinking about them.

Consider home visits as a last resort. This isn't out of the question. And if you're deeply concerned about reaching students who can't be reached in any other way, it may be possible to just drive to their neighborhoods and, maintaining all precautionary measures and social distancing, check in with them. One visit might be all that's needed to at least establish a phone connection that you can maintain from that point on.

2. Meeting Special Education, RTI, and Language Learning Needs

So many of our students have individual needs that we have figured out how to meet in a school setting. When school moves to a distance-learning model, both teachers and parents are often at a loss for how to continue working with students with IEPs, those who receive RTI support, English learners, and other students who get one-on-one time with educators specifically trained to meet their needs.

Since this one is really far out of my wheelhouse, I reached out on Twitter for help. Really, your best bet is to read the replies to see what might work for you. You'll not only get some good ideas, you're likely to connect with people you can reach out to for even more good ideas.

Apart from that, I have a two more resources to share:

Microsoft has a growing suite of tools made specifically to make online learning more accessible for all learners. One or more of these may make it easier for you to meet more students' needs from a distance.

The TalkingPoints app enables teachers to communicate with parents in the parents' native language, and it even works if parents only have text-based phones.

As I neared completion on this post, I opened up my inbox and found five other resources that had been sent to me for possible inclusion in this post. Looking through them made me realize I had missed gobs and gobs of information here. I felt completely deflated and overwhelmed all over again, but then, as I have often had to do in the past couple of weeks, I took a deep breath, closed up the things that were distracting and upsetting me, and said to myself, "Today you have done enough."

I hope this has helped you in some way. If not, tomorrow is another day.

Come back for more.
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Distance Learning: A Gently Curated Collection of Resources for Teachers

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An overview of the nuts and bolts of distance learning, including general tips, advice on tech, and troubleshooting some common problems.

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How to Recover the Joy of Teaching After an Online Pivot

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How to Recover the Joy of Teaching After an Online Pivot

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Simple, but helpful, advice from Flower Darby.

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What I Am Learning About My Students During an Impossible Semester by James Lang

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What I Am Learning About My Students During an Impossible Semester by James Lang

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"I don’t know what form my teaching and learning will take in the months ahead. But there is work yet to be done, and that this experience has lessons of value has been exactly what I have needed to keep my face forward and spirit alive during this crisis."
Read the rest of the article here.

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5 Strategies for Online Discussions using Zoom 

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5 Strategies for Online Discussions using Zoom 

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from Best practices: online pedagogy
1. Use zoom for small groups and one-on-one discussions. Use the Waiting Room feature to invite selected individuals into the discussion.
2. Use screen sharing and remote screen control to work with students on specific items.
3. Work collaboratively using the whiteboards feature.
4. Have students use the "raise hand" feature.
5. Make sure you can see your students.

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Best Practices in Planning Strategically for Online Education.

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Best Practices in Planning Strategically for Online Education.

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Best Practices in Online Program DevelopmentTeaching and Learning in Higher Education

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Best Practices in Online Program DevelopmentTeaching and Learning in Higher Education

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The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips, 2nd Edition

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The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips, 2nd Edition

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99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos 

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99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos 

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"The research is clear: online learning works best when faculty build regular, positive, and interactive relationships with students. A strategy that helps forge such a relationship is the use of videos. Student satisfaction and course engagement levels also increase with the use of instructor-generated videos – the subject of this book. "

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7 Exam Questions for a Pandemic (or any other time)

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7 Exam Questions for a Pandemic (or any other time)

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From Francis Su's blog
1. Take one homework problem you have worked on this semester that you struggled to understand and solve, and explain how the struggle itself was valuable.

2.  What ideas are you curious to know more about as a result of taking this class?

3. How has your [course content] imagination been enhanced as a result of taking this class?

4. Consider one [course content] idea from the course that you have found beautiful, and explain why it is beautiful to you.

5.  Give one example of a [course content] idea from this class that you found creative, and explain what you find creative about it.

6. For any problems you cannot solve on this exam, suggest a strategy you might try to tackle the problem, and show what happened as a result.

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The following points, from Flower Darby's book, can help your online students take more responsibility for their learning:
1. Offer choice in online discussions
2. Create self-enroll scaffolded groups
3. Apply specifications grading
4. Annotate, tweak, co-design your syllabus: check out Hypothesis for ideas about how to have students annotate documents

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The Blended Course Design Workbook by Kathryn Linder

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The Blended Course Design Workbook by Kathryn Linder

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"Providing a step-by-step course design process that emphasizes active learning and student engagement, this book will help instructors adapt traditional face-to-face courses to a blended environment by guiding them through the development of course goals and learning objectives, assignments, assessments, and student support mechanisms with technology integration in mind."

checkout bcdworkbook.com for resources

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Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time, by Linda Nilson

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Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time, by Linda Nilson

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Moving Classes Online Is Hard. Online Discussion Can Help.

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Moving Classes Online Is Hard. Online Discussion Can Help.