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At a time when members of our undocumented communities are grappling with fear and uncertainty, the California Community Colleges has launched a number of initiatives to reassure everyone that our campuses will remain safe, welcoming places for people from all backgrounds to learn.

California's community colleges embrace diversity in all forms. We believe all people have the right to access quality higher education. College-bound undocumented students are courageous, resilient and resourceful. They often work to pay for school and help their families. Many have lived in California for most of their life and have attended elementary, middle or high school in the United States.

That's why the California Community Colleges is proud to offer numerous services and protections to undocumented students, including up to 70,000 enrolled in our community colleges, who are protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. That's why our colleges will not release personally identifiable student information related to immigration status unless required by judicial order. That's why the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges has encouraged local districts to consider the system's values when creating policies and practices related to undocumented students. And that's why so many of our campuses have created Dreamer Resource Centers and hosted "know your rights" clinics.

It is vital that undocumented residents of California know their rights. For example, Assembly Bill 540 created a new exemption from the payment of out-of-state tuition for students who have attended a high school in California for three years and have earned a high school diploma or equivalent. The legislation was critical because without it, undocumented students attending a California community college would be paying thousands of dollars in tuition each year as non-residents or international students.

California is home to an estimated 2.5 million undocumented immigrants, and protecting our undocumented communities not only is the right thing to do, it is the economically wise thing to do. DACA recipients will contribute $460 billion to the U.S. economy in the next decade.

The California Community Colleges remains committed to standing with DACA recipients and other undocumented immigrants and providing them with educational opportunities.

Campus UndocuLiaison Contact

UndocuLiaisons are located on California community college campuses to provide answers and support for undocumented students of all nationalities and backgrounds. These resources provide a safe community for UndocuScholars and a judgement free place that makes it easier for students to focus on school and know they have support.
Find your nearest UndocuLiaison
Subscribe to the Undocumented Student Support Newsletter.

Please include your name, email, and college in the body of the email.

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At a time when members of our undocumented communities are grappling with fear and uncertainty, the California Community Colleges has launched a number of initiatives to reassure everyone that our campuses will remain safe, welcoming places for people from all backgrounds to learn.

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Los Angeles City College empowers students from the diverse communities it serves to achieve their educational and career goals by providing pathways to support their completion of associate degrees, certificates, transfer requirements, career and technical education, and foundational skills programs.

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by WestEd

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There is an emerging evidence base demonstrating the benefits of mindfulness for people of all ages in domains related to physical and mental health.

Mindfulness practices essentially cultivate attention, including self-awareness and self-knowledge of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and how they affect one's actions. Such practices are a promising approach to helping educators and students develop self-awareness and self-regulation skills that are associated with success in school and through adulthood.

Additionally, mindfulness skills are complementary to social and emotional learning (SEL), as self-awareness and self-management are among the five core skills of SEL identified by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning.

This WestEd brief, developed for the California Department of Education, describes what administrators and teachers can do now to promote the benefits of mindfulness and stress management.

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There is an emerging evidence base demonstrating the benefits of mindfulness for people of all ages in domains related to physical and mental health. Mindfulness practices essentially cultivate attention, including self-awareness and self-knowledge of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and how they affect one's actions.

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CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES HEALTH & WELLNESS

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CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES HEALTH & WELLNESS

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Health. Mental Health. Wellness. Basic Needs.

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A Program that Provides Training and Technical Assistance

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Association of American Colleges & Universities

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In the fall of 2019, at the University of Southern California (USC), nine students died of causes that included suicide and drug use. The campus community was shaken by grief and called for action to support student mental health. It was my second semester teaching Introduction to Mindfulness, a two-credit undergraduate course I developed with the mind-body branch of USC's Department of Physical Education. While the mindfulness course is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment, it can offer tools for facing challenging situations, and as students in the class grappled with the loss of their friends and peers, they reflected that the class was helping them enhance their mental health, well-being, and resiliency. In interviews, survey responses, and personal reflections, students remarked on the personal growth, coping skills, and the feeling of connection to themselves, others, and the world around them that they experienced as a result of the course curriculum and mindfulness practices.

"It has been an interesting time at USC these last couple weeks with everything going on related to mental health," Noah, a junior majoring in economics, wrote in a reflection. (Unless otherwise noted, names have been changed to protect student privacy.) To cope, Noah consciously applied tools from the course-meditating in the mornings, working on decision making, staying present, and holding his emotions lightly. "I have seen a big increase in my overall well-being, and I am looking forward to continuing the journey," he wrote.

As educators confront the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic racial justice issues, addressing student well-being is more crucial than ever. In addition to ensuring trained mental health professionals and other psychological resources are available to students, campuses can incorporate well-being into the college experience and situate it as a priority by offering specific, for-credit courses that explicitly teach students tools to care for their mental health and navigate life. At USC, one way we do this is through the mind-body branch of the Department of Physical Education, which offers courses in yoga, stress management, and mindfulness, including my Introduction to Mindfulness class. Many students end up taking several mind-body courses, in addition to other department fitness and recreation classes, for a multidimensional approach to health and well-being. These courses foster community and belonging while contextualizing self-care within students' busy college schedules, and the duration of a semester-long class allows for deep learning and accountability as students invest time and effort for a grade.

In April 2020, 80 percent of 2,086 college students surveyed by the nonprofit Active Minds said that the pandemic was negatively affecting their mental health, demonstrating just how much the current climate is magnifying the mental health challenges young adults were already facing. Prior to the pandemic, according to separate Active Minds data, 39 percent of college students reported that they experienced a significant mental health issue, and suicide was the second leading cause of death among college students. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that nearly two-thirds of people surveyed across twenty-five states had experienced at least one adverse childhood experience. These can include violence, neglect, abuse, or death of a family member. Nearly one in six had experienced more than four. Spring 2019 surveys from the American College Health Association found that in the twelve months prior, 13 percent of the 67,972 respondents felt tremendous stress, 24 percent were diagnosed with anxiety, and 20 percent were diagnosed with depression. Thirteen percent said that they had seriously considered suicide. These issues can negatively affect lives and learning, as students may withdraw or have trouble focusing if they are struggling mentally. Indeed, the Active Minds survey from April found that, amid the pandemic, 76 percent of students have had trouble sticking to a routine, 73 percent have had a hard time getting enough physical activity, and 63 percent have struggled to keep connected with others. Eighty-five percent said that focusing on studies has been one of the hardest things about having to stay at home.

These statistics are not our students' destinies. Rather, they reflect a crucial need to implement structured supports. Along with comprehensive campus mental health resources, mindfulness courses-whether in person or online-can offer students tools to thrive and focus on learning by cultivating awareness, processing emotions, and coping with difficult thoughts and stressors, in times of calm or challenge.

One student in my course, Zoey, had to move back in with her parents because of the pandemic and experienced anxiety over the uncertainty of her future plans. A senior business major, she found that sticking to a routine that includes meditation helped her focus on the present and stay productive. "Rather than worrying about what could happen and expending energy on stress about things I cannot control," she wrote in a class reflection, "mindfulness has taught me to enjoy the days that I do have with my family and make the most of the additional time I've been given."

Alongside the difficult emotions that are present amid calls for racial and social justice on campuses, mindfulness can help us compassionately bear witness to suffering and choose a wise personal and collective response. In a presentation and student panel I facilitated during USC's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Week earlier this year, Megan (Mae) Gates (her real name), a junior majoring in public policy who had taken my course, reflected on the role mindfulness can play in strengthening mental health in communities of color. A member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first Black sorority on campus, Mae has worked to have honest conversations about mental health in the Black community and ensure it is part of the impact she and her peers have on campus. "We have a lot of conversations among ourselves as Black women," she told the audience. "What does mental health mean to us? What are the disparities that we had growing up? And how can we ensure that this becomes an integral conversation in our community and every part of life that we walk through?"

In the traditional sense, mindfulness is a type of meditation practice, and Introduction to Mindfulness is a secular course in which we explore formal practices of meditation-seated, standing, walking-as well as informal practices of bringing mindfulness into daily life, relationships, and decision making. During the course, students develop a personal meditation practice that progresses throughout the semester. The curriculum comprises five modules through which students explore the principles of mindfulness, the body, working with emotions, working with thoughts, and incorporating mindfulness in daily life. Students submit reflection forms at the end of each module and read a corresponding workbook, which I authored, that covers real-world topics including decision making, communication, relationships, and grief. In book groups, students read a book from the mindfulness field to deepen knowledge of practice and theory. Choices include selections by Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Thich Nhat Hanh, Tara Brach, and Rhonda Magee.

Students also work in groups to explore strategies for incorporating mindfulness into an aspect of daily life, such as relationships, technology use, and social justice. This collaborative work creates supportive subgroups within the classroom community. The class has "provided me with a group of people that really care about loving people and building relationships," Lana, a senior majoring in cinematic arts, said during an interview about her experience in the class. Her group explored the topic of relationships and focused on listening to others. "That's been great because that's when we can really talk about it together," she said.

For exposure to a variety of styles and perspectives, students take an outside meditation class, which many do at a local studio (online during the pandemic) and continue to attend after the semester ends. I also invite guest speakers to class to discuss topics such as anxiety, grief, and intimacy and radical consent. Course assessments include a group presentation about their process and the impact of incorporating mindfulness into daily life, an exam on the principles of mindfulness, and reflection forms for each of the five modules-which include questions to deepen students' understanding and application of the content.

Through their work in Introduction to Mindfulness, students build agency, strengthened emotional resilience, and became more open to kindness and joy. They learn practices to help them navigate difficult experiences, everything from a disappointing grade on an assignment to a breakup, the loss of a friend or family member-or a global pandemic. To gauge student growth and learning in the course, I conducted surveys across the three fall 2019 classes at weeks one, five, and fifteen to establish a baseline, initial progress, and end-of-course impact. In the week-fifteen survey, 92 percent of students responded that they felt the course "much" or "very much" affected their capacity to cope with challenges. They also gained confidence and developed a stronger self-image.

Steve, a senior majoring in business who took my mindfulness course in fall 2019, recently sent me an email with the subject line "Meditation saved my life." He wrote about how tough 2020 has been for him, including feeling suicidal, losing friends, and losing his full-time job offer because of the pandemic. In the midst of his difficulties, he remembered the mindfulness lessons, practicing meditation to focus on appreciating what he did have. "I started to regain confidence and happiness in myself," he wrote. "I started to realize that happiness comes from within, and not through external things. I am improving and starting to gain a little bit of hope." In combination with professional help-in Steve's case I recommended he seek such assistance, provided him with resources, and also notified the campus mental health help line-mindfulness can offer tools to navigate challenges students face.

In Introduction to Mindfulness, students learn the RAIN technique to recognize what emotion is present, allow it instead of pushing it away, investigate how it feels in the body, and hold it with nurturing kindness and nonidentification (treating it as the impatience, rather than my impatience). Known as affect labeling, the process of naming emotions has been shown to diminish emotional reactivity by stimulating the prefrontal cortex region of the brain and disrupting emotional amygdala activity. Students correspondingly build resilience to cope with stressful thoughts and find that instead of suppressing difficult emotions, they are able to sit with and process them. In the week-fifteen survey, 89 percent of students said the course "much" or "very much" improved their capacity to bounce back from challenges. This capacity leads to more responsiveness-rather than reactivity-when navigating difficulties.

"I'm someone that really feels emotions when they're happening," wrote Mia, a junior majoring in cinema and media studies. "By paying more attention to identifying my emotions, I am able to begin the process of working with them and not letting them just control me." After the death of their classmate that fall, Mia and her friends got together and at one point started laughing about something. They immediately felt guilty. Mia told her friends about our class discussion on the idea that the heart is big enough to hold it all-the joy with the sorrow. In her reflections, she shared that hearing this helped her friends cope with the complexities of grief.

Comparisons of the week-five and week-fifteen survey responses indicated that high anxiety levels among the students in the mindfulness course dropped from 51 percent to 28 percent. Though the percentage of students who experienced depression didn't change (31 percent), all students who did experience it remarked that the course increased their capacity to cope. The number of students who felt they "much" or "very much" had tools to cope more than doubled, from 15 percent to 41 percent. This was also true for anxiety, with the number of students who felt they could "much" or "very much" cope increasing from 38 percent to 74 percent.

It wasn't that their outer circumstances had changed-rather their relationship to their challenges had. Eric, a sophomore psychology major, wrote that mindfulness helped him alleviate depression and anxiety and that his meditation practice had flourished. Over the semester, and with a therapist, Eric worked through a childhood trauma to gain power in defining his identity on his own terms. "My past doesn't define who I am," he wrote in a personal journal entry he shared with me. "But my past has certainly shaped who I am today. My pain has cracked my heart open wide. . . . There is so much more to me. I am much more than pain."

As students learned tools for improving mental health and emotional resilience, they also noticed they were more open to kindness and joy and more aware of things for which they were grateful. The number of students who responded that they "often" or "very often" engaged in self-criticism decreased from 54 percent in week five to 36 percent by week fifteen. Correspondingly, at week five, 33 percent of students said they rarely spoke to themselves with kindness. By week fifteen, this number had decreased to 8 percent-and 81 percent attributed an increase in kind self-talk to the course. "I began to speak to myself with kinder thoughts, and a kinder voice for myself emerged," Lana wrote. "I held each thought lightly and delicately, without judgment."

Introduction to Mindfulness is not a silver-bullet class designed to save anyone, and individuals facing depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues should consult a licensed professional. Rather, the course is an invitation to a field that teaches students tools to navigate their experiences with awareness, curiosity, kindness, and openness. As my students have learned more about mindfulness, they have wanted to share the practice with those they care about. Many recommended the course to friends, shared the workbook with their parents, or took meditation classes with family and friends.

"I'm really taking my hardest classes to date, and I have so much on my plate," Devin, a business major, remarked in an interview. The mindfulness class "is like a weird gap in my really busy schedule today where . . . I'm doing something for myself instead of doing something for my GPA or someone else."

Situating a mindfulness course within the college day provides a safe space for students to build mental health and well-being practices among a community of their peers over a sustained period of time. This can be done in-person or in an online community. Though it may be difficult to be a college student in today's society, no one has to navigate it alone. Institutions can include spaces where students explicitly learn resilient coping skills to manage whatever challenges arise-not as a one-time event but as a structured, proactive, comprehensive response to a clear and continued mental health need. In the wake of the tragedies at USC in fall 2019 and others throughout the country, in the face of the pandemic, in the urgent calls for racial justice, and with unknown challenges on the horizon, it is my hope that more universities, in addition to ensuring their campus offers robust mental health services, situate well-being courses alongside academics. This can even be structured as a well-being general education requirement so all students have the opportunity to build the mental and emotional resilience to fully thrive.

"People run on such high stress, and being mindful isn't usually part of their daily discourse," Mia said in an interview. "Having the opportunity to learn it in a class setting, where you're kind of forced [to learn it] but also it's not demanding or homework-intensive-having every student take this would be so helpful."
Many thanks to student researchers Shayla McPherson, Cambria Peterson, and Sudhakar Sood for their diligence in interviewing students in the mindfulness course.
Linda Yaron Weston teaches in the University of Southern California's Department of Physical Education. She is the author of Mindfulness for Young Adults: Tools to Thrive in School and Life.

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Mindfulness in Class and in Life: Mental Health and Emotional Resilience Alongside Academic Studies

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In the fall of 2019, at the University of Southern California (USC), nine students died of causes that included suicide and drug use. The campus community was shaken by grief and called for action to support student mental health.

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Antiracist Resources for your 2020-2021 Teaching

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Advice to Super Teachers

Students cannot be taught by a guru

they perceive as being despising

of them, for they look up to you,

nor should you try fooling

them. That does not work either.

Be your authentic humane self.

Share your stories. Remember

your success was not won by yourself

alone. It was a joint effort,

A collective collaboration, to make you an expert

On your topic, now you are considered a genius

But before you were just a regular ignoramus!

Don’t lose your empathy. Be an erudite.

Lest your Superpower becomes your Kryptonite.

Fatema Baldiwala

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It is essential for us to be well-read in anti-racist texts to help ensure that our online "institutions" are anti-racist.

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Home › Ideal Bookshelf 1162: Anti-Racism

In May 2020, you told Jane,via Instagram, non-fiction books to read to be anti-racist and to make us all better people, and she made it into an Ideal Bookshelf.

AND, click here to downloada checklist of those books, so you can read them all.

First offered in May 2020

Archival pigment ink print on fine art paper

Based on original paintings by Jane Mount

We've partnered with our friends at Simply Framed to offer custom framing in your choice of white, black, or natural wood, plus a 2" white mat and UV-shielding plexiglass. (You can see more details in our FAQ.) Please note, if you order a framed 8x10" print or painting, it will arrive in a frame that is about 11x14". An 11x14" print or painting will be in a 16x20" frame, and a 16x20" in a 20x24" frame. As all the frames are custom fit to the prints, framing your work adds 2-3 weeks to your delivery time, but it is *so* worth it, we promise.

Other things you might like

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In May 2020, you told Jane, via Instagram, non-fiction books to read to be anti-racist and to make us all better people, and she made it into an Ideal Bookshelf. AND, click here to download a checklist of those books, so you can read them all.

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65 Things White People Can do for Racial Justice

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65 Things White People Can do for Racial Justice

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106 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice

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Note 1: This article was last updated on February 5, 2022.
Note 2: Our work is to fix what we broke and left broken. The work isn’t done…

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Resources like the Abolitionist Futures conference, the Prison Culture blog, and the African American Intellectual History Society have compiled extensive reading lists on policing, incarceration, and the racism baked into both systems. Other groups, including Critical Resistance, have published documents like an " Abolition Organizing Toolkit." And in Minneapolis, MPD150 is a group of local grassroots organizers pushing for the abolition of the city's police department, and it also has a handy zine for frequently asked questions about abolition.

Invest time and resources in on-the-ground community abolitionist efforts.

In the current situation in Minneapolis, these efforts can include Freedom Funds like the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which directly supports activists and organizers who are doing work on the ground. The Minnesota Freedom Fund is "supporting a movement constellation of formations," according to its Twitter, where they also advise donating to the Black Visions Collective, Reclaim the Block, and Unicorn Riot. And as the Floyd family mourns their loss, you can offer direct support to them through GoFundMe and by supporting the work of groups like MPD150.

Respect the leaders on the ground who have been doing the work and leading the way. As documented by the National Bail Fund Network, freedom and bond funds exist all over the country, and they need support even when police brutality isn't in the headlines.

Get involved locally.

This is an important national conversation that gets renewed every time another city is seized by racist horror, but good politics start locally. Sign yourself up for a local listserv or organization that is working to create a lasting organizing infrastructure in your community. If you need help getting started, look for local news reports of anti-racist protest actions, find out who is organizing them, and if you can support their ongoing work.

Uplift and center the voices of the most marginalized people.

In all conversations, it is crucial that we uplift and center the voices and experiences of the people who are most impacted by these issues. Lift up and listen to people like Tami Sawyer, Da'Shaun Harrison, Delaney Vandergrift, Clarissa Brooks, Bree Newsome Bass, and many others. Say the names of Black women who often go unheard of and unseen on major news and media platforms, and make room for Black women to speak for themselves.

Take action in your own life.

Name and call out racism, misogynoir, transphobia, homophobia, queerphobia, fatphobia, and white supremacy in all its forms. It may be uncomfortable to confront your parents, your boss, your teacher, or your peers, but that's no excuse not to do it. Fighting oppression is uncomfortable work by its nature, and working to make change in the systems you're already a part of is as important as plugging into conversations about systems you don't interact with regularly.

Why does it matter?

It is important to be part of building the organizing infrastructure in our communities so that the next time there's another hashtag mourning another death, we already have the playbook to act. We have the leaders and gatekeepers (who do the work) positioned to continue to lead in a sustained way, but they need the support of everyone who wants to see an end to these racist systems.

So many have wanted to shy away from discussing race, but we have to talk about white supremacy. We have to talk about police violence and the surveillance and profiling of Black folks. Until we can truly discuss all of this, we are failing to address the root causes of these issues. Now is not the time to recoil.

We are so tired of trying to prove our humanity. It is time for everyone to step up and act. Respectability, silence, and turning the other cheek to "avoid conflict" is no longer enough.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Ahmaud Arbery's Killing Is a Reminder of the Difference Between Non-Racist and Anti-Racist

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Resources like the Abolitionist Futures conference, the Prison Culture blog, and the African American Intellectual History Society have compiled extensive reading lists on policing, incarceration, and the racism baked into both systems. Other groups, including Critical Resistance, have published documents like an " Abolition Organizing Toolkit."

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Please add to and share this padlet with your students!

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Together We Rise has compiled COVID-19 resources for foster youth.

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As we continue to make adjustments due to the COVID-19/coronavirus outbreak. Together We Rise has compiled resources for foster youth and their families.

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In a recent interview with James Corden, the best-selling Israeli philosopher Yuval Harari bemoaned the loss of interaction between students taking classes on Zoom. "When I went to university," he reminisced, "the most interesting and important things happened in the breaks [between lectures]."

Harari is absolutely right: time spent in class is just the beginning of a university education. Some of the most generative interactions happen in dorm room hallways or over coffee or with a stranger seated next to you at a public lecture. It is the in-between moments and spaces that bind diverse groups of students and faculty, and it is the community that gives a university its distinct character.

But Harari may also be shortsighted on this issue. There is no reason that universities can't create virtual spaces and foster experiences that encourage interaction beyond class meetings and inclusion in the school's broader community.

These obviously won't be the same as experiences on quads, in the library stacks and in student unions. But we can approximate virtually what is impossible to achieve physically during a global pandemic: encounters between students in far-flung places, between professors in quarantine and between clubs, teams, marching bands, study groups, hall mates, strangers and friends scattered across time zones.

As we prepare for next year's incoming class and returning students, it may now be imperative for universities to create virtual communities in addition to virtual classes -- to make sure that the most interesting and important things continue to happen in the in-between times and spaces on our campuses. We've all heard rumors of gap years and leaves of absence if the fall semester is online like the spring. No one knows yet what the fall will hold. Classes may be held on campus, in hybrid models, online or in some combination.

But the answer to making the fall more than the spring requires creating a community that students want to belong to -- and we should be prepared to do this online. Universities now face the challenge of stitching together a social fabric that is as compelling to students as our traditional communities have been, with athletic events, parties and the unique rites of passage that make our students feel part of something larger and more enduring.

First, we will need to figure out what virtual hallways, cafes and lecture halls look like. Students already hack social media and learning platforms to create their own communities, having drinks on Zoom after an exam, holding band practice on the social gaming platform Discord or bringing club discussions to Facebook. Some companies are trying to fill the gap, too. Facebook itself has been rumored to be returning to its roots, developing walled-off school communities within its network. Other companies, like the Boston-based Ambi, seek to be the social network for universities. DevPost and its competitors manage online student hackathons. And People Grove has been adopted widely to connect students with alumni. Whatever software we use -- and we may want to build our own virtual campuses -- our online communities will have to be as distinctive as our campuses.

Then we need to let the students bring their own creativity to the task at hand. If there was ever a time for a truly collaborative effort between the university and its students, this is it. Building an intelligent and highly differentiated virtual community that reflects and reinforces our students' collective identity is a team endeavor. We need our students to make this new community their own, and we need to respect their ways of doing so.

Looking to the past can provide helpful insight for today's administration. On many campuses, students have long held club fairs in the fall, they collectively scream before end-of-term exams and they hold large music events in the spring, forging their own rituals.

Healthy academic communities also allow for students to react against the university's attempts to reform its community. In the mid-1950s, Rice University students were concerned that their required affiliation with newly built residential colleges would destroy the rich traditions and rituals they had developed around freshman, sophomore, junior and senior classes. Within a month of the residential college openings, they responded by creating new trans-college traditions like beer bike -- a combination of intramural bicycle race and drinking competition -- which continues over half a century later to be a distinctive feature of Rice campus life.

At the University of Pennsylvania, when the university banned alcohol from football games, students responded by toasting after games' third quarter with actual toast -- the bread kind. What was originally a rebuke to the institution became one of its cherished conventions, and today as many as 30,000 pieces of toast can be cleaned up by the "toast zamboni" after a home game.

Sometimes, the traditions that bind the community together the most are the ones that leave student marks on the campus, both literally and figuratively. MIT students have a long tradition of "hacking" the campus, remaking rooms, hallways and buildings when no one is looking. Many of the most famous MIT hacks involve its Great Dome building, which has been transformed into R2D2 and had a simulated campus police car placed atop its eponymous, Parthenon-like dome. Students, faculty and even the MIT administration celebrate students' triumphs over the laws of physics and campus law enforcement.

Looking to the present and future is equally important. This spring, students are already telling us a lot about what matters to them in building community: making friends by showing up to virtual trivia nights, addressing professional development needs by logging on to alumni career development events in record numbers, offering weekly online department seminars to advance both student and faculty research, scheduling Netflix parties where students can find their friends and make new ones, and backchanneling with direct messages during classes. Perhaps Harari's students are already passing virtual notes in class under his nose.

It won't be easy to figure out how to engage in all of these activities online, and we will certainly miss their on-campus prototypes until we can return to them. But in the short term, re-creating the space in between classes is necessary to keep university communities alive. Looking to the future, academic communities will only remain more valuable and inclusive if they can mix on-campus and online communities.

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Community Is the Secret to Successfully Enrolling Students in the Fall

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In a recent interview with James Corden, the best-selling Israeli philosopher Yuval Harari bemoaned the loss of interaction between students taking classes on Zoom. "When I went to university," he reminisced, "the most interesting and important things happened in the breaks [between lectures]."

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The coronavirus outbreak has made it harder to get and afford groceries and prepared meals. If you or someone you know needs help getting food, here are some resources available to you.

Emergency food and food benefits

CalFresh food benefits

CalFresh (sometimes called SNAP or food stamps) issues monthly food benefits on an EBT card that can be used to buy most foods at most grocery stores and farmers markets. People and families with low income can apply for CalFresh any time. If you have a change in income, even a temporary one because of the coronavirus, you can apply for CalFresh food benefits.

To apply, visit CalFresh online or call 1-877-847-3663 ( 1-877-847-FOOD).

Beginning April 28, people getting CalFresh food benefits can use their EBT card to buy groceries online at Amazon and Walmart statewide. See frequently asked questions about using EBT online.

Food banks

Local food banks and pantries are open and operating across California. Find a local food bank near you. In April and May, extra food boxes will be available for people and families because of the coronavirus.

Families with school-aged children

School meals and the 'CA Meals for Kids' app

The governor's executive order ensures public schools will retain full funding. Check your local school district for more information on how and where to receive free or reduced-cost school meals.

The CA Meals for Kids app can help students and families find meals during COVID-19 emergency school closures.

The app is free and can be downloaded from Apple's App Store, Google's Play Store, and Microsoft's App Store.

Pandemic EBT (P-EBT)

Families with children who are eligible for free or reduced-price meals will get extra food benefits to help buy food when schools are closed due to COVID-19. These food benefits are called Pandemic EBT or P-EBT benefits.

Families can get up to $365 for each child who is eligible for P-EBT benefits. The total amount depends on how many eligible children are living in your home. Students can still pick up to-go meals even if they are receiving P-EBT benefits.

Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) benefits will be available for eligible families starting May 2020.

Families with children who get CalFresh, Medi-Cal, or Foster Care benefits do not need to apply. Most families will get their P-EBT card in the mail during the month of May.

Families with children who applied for CalFresh, Medi-Cal, or Foster Care benefits after their school closed will get their P-EBT card in the mail before June 30, 2020.

Families with children who are eligible for free or reduced-price meals and who do not get CalFresh, Medi-Cal, or Foster Care benefits must apply online before June 30, 2020. The online application will launch in late May.

See frequently asked questions about P-EBT and visit the P-EBT program on the CA Department of Social Services' website for the latest information.

Older adults

Great Plates Delivered: Home meals for seniors

Seniors and other adults at high risk from coronavirus will soon be able to get daily meals delivered to their homes from local restaurants through this program. Check Great Plates Delivered (formerly known as Restaurants Deliver) for information and updates.

Home-delivered meals for older adults

Older adults (aged 60+) who live at home and find cooking difficult may be able to receive prepared meals delivered to their home, regardless of income level. And seniors who used to visit community meal sites can have those meals home-delivered instead.

Find a meal provider in your area or call 1-800-510-2020.

To find more information about services available for older adults, adults with disabilities, and family caregivers, see the California Department of Aging or call the California Aging and Adult Info Line at 1-800-510-2020.

To connect with more services and support in your local area, visit Find Services in My County.

Food bank food for older adults

Older adults (aged 60+) can get a box of nutritious food to help supplement their diets through the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. CSFP boxes are available at these food bank locations.

Statewide COVID-19 information hotline

This COVID-19 hotline connects seniors to vital state and local services and resources, as well as answers general questions about COVID-19. It's a part of an ongoing effort to provide reliable, trusted information and support to any Californian who needs it.

California COVID-19 Hotline: 833-422-4255 (833-4CA-4ALL)

The call center is open 7 days a week:

Monday through Friday, 8:00 am to 8:00 pm, Pacific Daylight Time

Saturday and Sunday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Pacific Daylight Time

211

211 is a free and confidential information and referral service that connects people to local resources. It is available in more than 100 languages, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

If you need assistance finding food or other essential services, dial 211 to speak to someone who can help, or visit 211.org.

Connect2Affect

A program of the AARP Foundation, Connect2Affect helps seniors find support services in their area, such as food and medical care.

The site also has tools for evaluating isolation risk, reconnecting to community, and reaching out to those who may be feeling lonely.

Eldercare Locator

Older adults and their families can connect to services and resources in their local community by visiting the Eldercare Locator website or by calling 1-800-677-1116.

GoGoGrandparent

GoGoGrandparent lets older adults use on-demand grocery delivery companies like Instacart, restaurant delivery companies like DoorDash, and transportation companies like Lyft without a smartphone while keeping family and loved ones notified. GoGoGrandparent operators are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

To register, visit the GoGoGrandparent website or call 1-855-464-6872. Once registered, you can place an order for grocery delivery, or order meals from local restaurants to be delivered to your home. If you must leave your home and need transportation, you can also use GoGoGrandparent to get a ride.

Grocery delivery options

Walmart grocery delivery service

Walmart grocery delivery service lets you shop online and schedule a drop-off to your home. Find a Walmart near you to schedule a grocery delivery.

Target same day delivery

Target same day delivery service lets you shop online or through their app to purchase groceries and supplies to be delivered to your home. Find a Target that delivers in your area.

Safeway

Safeway lets you choose a delivery time for drop-off to your home. Find a Safeway that delivers in your area.

TaskRabbit

You can use TaskRabbit to find immediate help with everyday tasks, including food and pharmacy delivery. A 5% discount for seniors is available. Visit the TaskRabbit website or download the free app for your smartphone from Apple's App Store or Google's Play Store.

Many other retailers and grocery stores have delivery options. Please check with your preferred store to find out if they deliver.

How you can help

Many programs are redirecting food that would otherwise go to waste to help feed children and families during the COVID-19 crisis. Some accept cash and surplus food donations.

The California Association of Food Banks' (CAFB) Farm to Family Program works with farmers, ranchers, packers, and shippers to get California farm products from the field to 40+ food banks throughout the state. You can donate money or surplus crops through the CAFB website.

Hidden Harvest is a produce recovery program in Coachella Valley. Contact them to donate money or volunteer.

Feeding America is the largest hunger-relief organization in the United States and is accepting cash donations to their COVID-19 Response Fund.

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The coronavirus / COVID-19 outbreak has made it harder for Californians to get and afford groceries and prepared meals. This page lists food benefits and programs available to individuals, families, and seniors, including food stamps, school meals, and home delivery of prepared meals.

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Racial Equity in Online Environments Webinars

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Racial Equity in Online Environments Webinars

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California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office and The Center for Urban Education

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A six-part webinar series designed to provide strategies for faculty and administrators to support and advocate for their most vulnerable students.

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Vision Resource Center | Vision Resource Center

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The Vision Resource Center is the next evolution of the Professional Learning Network and provides continued access to Lynda.com and Skillsoft, as well as supporting more engaging resources and communities. During the transition you'll find all of the original Resources and the Applied Solution Kit on the legacy site.

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COVID-19 Resources - John Burton Advocates

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The COVID-19 crisis is having a global impact, however some populations are feeling the effects of the public health and economic crisis harder than others. For youth currently and formerly in foster care and that have experienced homelessness, existing challenges related to housing, education, employment, income and health have only been exacerbated by the pandemic.

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COVID-19 Field Support for Literacy & Adult Education Providers in California

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COVID-19 Field Support for Literacy & Adult Education Providers in California

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The Outreach and Technical Assistance Network provides electronic collaboration and information, and support for instructional technology and distance learning to literacy and adult education providers in California.

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The Outreach and Technical Assistance Network ( OTAN), the California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project ( CALPRO), and Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment Systems ( CASAS) are the three state leadership projects that support the California adult education field.

OTAN

CALPRO

CASAS

CDE Adult Education Office

COVID-19 Critical Events Survey (Effective 4/13: Re-opened until further notice)
In cooperation with the California Adult Education Office and our partner leadership projects, OTAN is curating and compiling information, resources, and other supports to help educators and learners continue their instructional programs. To help in this effort, the AEO is asking agencies to fill out this survey. The form asks thirty (30) questions along with the agency name and email address. It is estimated this form will take less than 10 minutes to complete.

CDE AEO Notice to the Field 3-30-2020
From the Adult Education Office

CDE AEO Notice to the Field 03-16-2020
From the Adult Education Office: CDE AEO Notice to the Field

OCTAE: Program Memorandum 20-4, April 17, 2020, re: AEFLA and COVID-19 FAQ, Part 2

OCTAE: Program Memorandum 20-3, March 30, 2020, re: AEFLA and COVID-19 FAQ

For Our Students

Additional Resources

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The Outreach and Technical Assistance Network ( OTAN), the California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project ( CALPRO), and Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment Systems ( CASAS) are the three state leadership projects that support the California adult education field.

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COVID-19 Field Support for Literacy & Adult Education Providers in California

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COVID-19 Field Support for Literacy & Adult Education Providers in California

# data[].attributes.body
The Outreach and Technical Assistance Network provides electronic collaboration and information, and support for instructional technology and distance learning to literacy and adult education providers in California.

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The Outreach and Technical Assistance Network ( OTAN), the California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project ( CALPRO), and Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment Systems ( CASAS) are the three state leadership projects that support the California adult education field.

OTAN

CALPRO

CASAS

CDE Adult Education Office

COVID-19 Critical Events Survey (Effective 4/13: Re-opened until further notice)
In cooperation with the California Adult Education Office and our partner leadership projects, OTAN is curating and compiling information, resources, and other supports to help educators and learners continue their instructional programs. To help in this effort, the AEO is asking agencies to fill out this survey. The form asks thirty (30) questions along with the agency name and email address. It is estimated this form will take less than 10 minutes to complete.

CDE AEO Notice to the Field 3-30-2020
From the Adult Education Office

CDE AEO Notice to the Field 03-16-2020
From the Adult Education Office: CDE AEO Notice to the Field

OCTAE: Program Memorandum 20-4, April 17, 2020, re: AEFLA and COVID-19 FAQ, Part 2

OCTAE: Program Memorandum 20-3, March 30, 2020, re: AEFLA and COVID-19 FAQ

For Our Students

Additional Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Outreach and Technical Assistance Network ( OTAN), the California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project ( CALPRO), and Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment Systems ( CASAS) are the three state leadership projects that support the California adult education field.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Outreach and Technical Assistance Network ( OTAN), the California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project ( CALPRO), and Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment Systems ( CASAS) are the three state leadership projects that support the California adult education field.

OTAN

CALPRO

CASAS

CDE Adult Education Office

COVID-19 Critical Events Survey (Effective 4/13: Re-opened until further notice)
In cooperation with the California Adult Education Office and our partner leadership projects, OTAN is curating and compiling information, resources, and other supports to help educators and learners continue their instructional programs. To help in this effort, the AEO is asking agencies to fill out this survey. The form asks thirty (30) questions along with the agency name and email address. It is estimated this form will take less than 10 minutes to complete.

CDE AEO Notice to the Field 3-30-2020
From the Adult Education Office

CDE AEO Notice to the Field 03-16-2020
From the Adult Education Office: CDE AEO Notice to the Field

OCTAE: Program Memorandum 20-4, April 17, 2020, re: AEFLA and COVID-19 FAQ, Part 2

OCTAE: Program Memorandum 20-3, March 30, 2020, re: AEFLA and COVID-19 FAQ

For Our Students

Additional Resources

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The Outreach and Technical Assistance Network ( OTAN), the California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project ( CALPRO), and Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment Systems ( CASAS) are the three state leadership projects that support the California adult education field.

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Webinars with focus: empowering educators with equity and access.

Attend our webinars or listen to a recorded session by experts covering hot topics on equity and access, special population barriers, and nontraditional employment.

Let's make it better. Tell us how you like the webinars "

Recorded Webinars

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Webinars with focus: empowering educators with equity and access. Attend our webinars or listen to a recorded session by experts covering hot topics on equity and access, special population barriers, and nontraditional employment. Let's make it better. Tell us how you like the webinars "

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Hartnell College Resources for Online Students

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Hartnell College Resources for Online Students

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EQUITY PROGRAMS (Salinas Valley Promise, Mi CASA)
Este mensaje se repite en espanol abajo

Through its new online format, the Office of Equity Programs/Mi CASA staff will continue to serve you and support you in any challenges that you may be experiencing.

Would you like to meet with a counselor or staff memeber? Have a question? We can call, email, or do a video appointment using zoom. Here are the different ways you can contact us:

Please complete this service request form: Student Service Request Form

To leave a voice message call: (831) 755-6723
To contact us using email: micasa@hartnell.edu

Or contact us individually:

Adriana Gonzalez, Program Assistant, Equity Programs
agonzalezsebastian@hartnell.edu
Cynna Obana, Lead Program Coordinator, Salinas Valley Promise
cobana@hartnell.edu
Bronwyn Moreno, Director, Equity Programs
bmoreno@hartnell.edu
Adriana Chavez, Counselor
adchavez@hartnell.edu

Daisy Nunez, Counselor
dnunez@hartnell.edu

To make an appointment with a counselor: Student Appointment Request Form

For more information about us please find us online at: hartnell.edu/students/programs/specialprograms

Mientras el colegio se transiciona a clases en línea, queremos que sepan que el personal de la Oficina de Programas de Equidad/ Mi CASA están aquí para ofrecer apoyo con cualquier obstáculo que estén experimentando utilizando nuestro nuevo formato en línea.

Estamos aquí para ustedes! Le gustaría hacer una cita de consejería o con el personal de la oficina? Tienen preguntas? Les podemos llamar, email,o hacer una videoconferencia usando Zoom.

Por favor complete este formulario para solicitar una cita: Solicitud de Servicios Estudiantiles

Para dejar un mensaje de voz: 831.755.6723

Para contactarnos por correo electrónico: micasa@hartnell.edu

O contactarnos individualmente:
Adriana Gonzalez, Assistente de Programas, Programas de Equidad
agonzalezsebastian@hartnell.edu

Chynna Obana, Coordinadora principal: Promesa del Valle de Salinas
cobana@hartnell.edu

Bronwyn Moreno, Directora, Programas de Equidad
bmoreno@hartnell.edu

Adriana Chavez, Consejera
adchavez@hartnell.edu

Daisy Nunez, Consejera
dnunez@hartnell.edu

Para hacer una cita de consejería: Solicitud de Servicios Estudiantiles

Para más información encuentranos en línea: hartnell.edu/students/programs/specialprograms

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EQUITY PROGRAMS (Salinas Valley Promise, Mi CASA) Este mensaje se repite en espanol abajo Through its new online format, the Office of Equity Programs/Mi CASA staff will continue to serve you and support you in any challenges that you may be experiencing. Would you like to meet with a counselor or staff memeber?

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Ways to be More Inclusive in Your Zoom Teaching

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Ways to be More Inclusive in Your Zoom Teaching

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https://chroniclevitae.com/news/2333-8-ways-to-be-more-inclusive-in-your-zoom-teaching?cid=VTEVPMSED1

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Canvas Tutorial Mobile

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The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an unprecedented education equity crisis in California. Education leaders at schools and colleges across the state have closed their physical locations and begun to implement distance learning plans, doing their best to support their students and communities in these uncertain times.

Education leaders have a responsibility to support and protect all students, particularly those who are most vulnerable, through this crisis and beyond. Amid school and college closures, parents, families, and students deserve to know what instructional supports and resources are available to them.

This Equity Alert calls attention to key issues that school and college leaders will encounter and offers recommendations for moving forward with equity at the forefront. To ensure this crisis does not widen opportunity gaps for students of color, students from low-income families, English learners, and students with disabilities, Ed Trust-West suggests education leaders consider the following:

Meeting P-12 Students' Learning Needs

K-12 Grade-Level Promotion

High School Graduation and Postsecondary Transition

Course Grading Flexibility and Supports at Colleges and Universities

Student Transitions and Progress at Colleges and Universities

5 steps policymakers can take:

1. Direct school districts to make distance learning plans publicly available via an easily accessible, user-friendly, multi-lingual platform.

2. Adopt emergency regulations that describe how schools should measure student learning during this crisis and how this information should be used to allocate district- and school-level resources and tailor supports to help students catch up on missed material.

3. Enact emergency regulations to provide more flexibility for students in the Class of 2020 to meet high school graduation requirements and be a-g eligible with necessary ongoing support.

4. Hold schools accountable for providing specific outreach, resources, and support to students with disabilities and English learners in students' home language.

5. Require that state federal coronavirus response funds be used by school districts to achieve these purposes and that higher education invest coronavirus response funds in improving support for incoming students, addressing academic needs without traditional remediation, expanding access to evidence-based student success programs, and providing wraparound services-including access to food and child care-to support students .

5 steps K-12 district and school leaders can take:

1. Create systems that grant all students the opportunity to access grade level content in ways that ensure the most marginalized students have access; do not solely rely on online learning. This should incorporate clear direction, criteria, and resources for students to meet course requirements and demonstrate readiness, including through written work packets and project-based learning.

2. Institute flexible, student-centered grading criteria such as pass/no pass grading policies for the remainder of the school year . G enerate a note on all students' transcripts that explains pass/no pass grade is a result of COVID-19 related school closures.

3. Extend access to already a-g approved online learning opportunities to every high school student in the district/school.

4. For the Class of 2020, pass a resolution to recognize California's high school graduation requirements in lieu of individual district/school graduation requirements. This includes a waiver for the Spring 2020 semester for students in the Class of 2021, 22, and 23 if they are unable to complete the semesters credit requirements as a result of school closures.

5. Allocate resources-staff, time, and materials-for extended learning time during the summer (if possible due to the pandemic) and for the 2020-21 school year based on student need, ensuring that the most vulnerable students are prioritized for instructional and socio-emotional support and opportunities to catch up and advance academically.

5 steps higher education leaders can take:

1. Institute flexible grading policies that that allow currently enrolled students to determine their preferred grade notation (i.e., letter grade or pass/not pass), at the end of the term. The flexibility should be extended across all colleges and universities in the state. Implement a notation on all students' transcripts that explain course grades were impacted by coronavirus.

2. Private colleges and universities should follow the California State University and the University of California's decision to temporarily accept transfer units taken as "pass/no pass" for undergraduate admission.

3. Exempt the number of pass/no pass units taken during COVID-19 impacted terms from the total number of "pass/no pass" units students can take during their undergraduate career to be eligible for graduation. This should extend to graduating seniors (i.e., Class of 2020) and the Classes of 2021, 2022, and 2023.

4. Remove the restriction to fulfill major specific courses for a letter grade. Students should have the flexibility to take courses that complete their major course requirements and not have to retake coursework for which they received a "pass" to complete.

5. Probation and academic dismissal procedures associated with a student receiving no pass in a course should be suspended for current college students who attempt to persist in the course. Similar approaches should be taken for circumstances in which students elect to withdraw from a course during the current academic year. The California Community College system has already issued such guidance; the University of California, California State University, and private colleges and universities in the state should do the same.

School and college leaders have a responsibility to support most vulnerable students and families through the COVID-19 pandemic. @edtrustwest shares key principles and actions education leaders should consider to ensure #EdEquity https://ctt.ac/duBx6+

The #COVID19 pandemic has posed an unprecedented education equity crisis in California. @edtrustwest shares recommendations for school and college leaders to address learning, transitions, and grades during these times https://ctt.ac/duBx6+

For more education equity-centered resources and responses, click here.

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Education Equity in Crisis: How to Address Learning, Promotions, Transitions and Grades in Light of School and College Closures - The Education Trust - West

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The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an unprecedented education equity crisis in California. Education leaders at schools and colleges across the state have closed their physical locations and begun to implement distance learning plans, doing their best to support their students and communities in these uncertain times.

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3CSN Community Resources for Online Learning Assistance

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3CSN Community Resources for Online Learning Assistance

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Playlists for many disciplines

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history biology literature learning education science humanities school "world history" ap tests smart fun chemistry psychology apush whap

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At Crash Course, we believe that high-quality educational videos should be available to everyone for free! Subscribe for weekly videos from our current courses! Right now, we're producing Climate & Energy. The Crash Course team has produced more than 45 courses on a wide variety of subjects, including organic chemistry, literature, world history, biology, philosophy, theater, ecology, and many more!

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Chaffey College LSC Zoom User Guide for Students

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Chaffey College LSC Zoom User Guide for Students

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Developed to help students get connected to and participate in online workshops

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How to Hide Your Messy Room for Zoom Meetings :)

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How to Hide Your Messy Room for Zoom Meetings :)

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The novel coronavirus outbreak has forced a lot more people to work from home these days, and many of them are keeping in touch via video conferencing software like Zoom. If you find yourself in that position, you may have suddenly realized that the piles of toys, equipment, dirty clothes, and dust bunnies that you always took for granted are going to be very visible as you try to convince your co-workers that you are an expert in your field.

Don't despair. If your company (like many others) uses Zoom in order to do its teleconferencing, you can hide all of that detritus using Zoom's Virtual Background feature. The feature lets you use a still image or a video in the background to hide whatever is really going on back there - that is, if your computer can handle it.

There is a long list of requirements on Zoom's support site, depending on the type of system you're using. If you have a high-end system - usually a later version of your OS of choice with an Intel Core i5 or i7 quad-core processor - you can use a virtual background immediately. If you have a slightly lower-end system, you may still be able to use the feature, but you'll need to have a physical green screen behind you.

Here's how you can set up a virtual background using Zoom's desktop client for a Mac or PC:

Open up your Zoom client

Click on the gear "Setup" icon on the upper-right corner

Select "Virtual Background" in the left-hand menu

Zoom has provided some sample backgrounds. Click on the one you'd like to use.

If you would rather supply your own background, click on the plus sign above and to the left of the sample backgrounds, choose an image from your computer, and add it. And if your computer isn't capable of handling a virtual background without a physical green screen, you will get a warning and be urged to check the "I have a green screen" box below the sample images.

You can also add a virtual background during a meeting.

In your Zoom client, click on the up-arrow next to the video symbol on the bottom left

Select "Choose a virtual background..." That will bring you to the same Virtual Background page as before.

That should do it. Now you can attend any virtual business meeting without fear of exposing your lack of talent in either home design or cleaning methods.
Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. For more information, see

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How to use Zoom to hide your mess when working from home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The novel coronavirus outbreak has forced a lot more people to work from home these days, and many of them are keeping in touch via video conferencing software like Zoom.

# data[].attributes.body
Great resource that includes tips for making an effective home workspace!

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Zoom is providing support to help navigate remote work and effectively use Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Resources_ 3CSN Mindfulness for Student Success.pdf

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Reading Apprenticeship - Downloadable Resources

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Reading Apprenticeship - Downloadable Resources

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Downloadable Resources - Reading Apprenticeship at WestEd

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Reading Apprenticeship is a research-validated approach for improving subject area literacy in middle school, high school, and community college.

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ES 20-11 Online Student Tutoring Guidance

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Collection of Hybrid and Remote Learning Resources and Activities

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Administrators at college and university campuses have started to urge faculty members to be flexible with students amid the current COVID-19 outbreak, recommending that physical contact and the exchange of physical items (e.g., graded papers and assignments) be limited. The same is true for staff working in student services, including admissions specialists, recruiters, academic coaches, counselors and academic advisers. Students and administrators alike are concerned about not only contracting the illness but also spreading it to more vulnerable populations.

In this environment, which is becoming increasingly precarious, advisers should consider how to serve students who may very well be reluctant to schedule an appointment or meet face-to-face. In the coming months, advisers will need to explore new methods using technology to serve their students -- making the mantra "meet students where they are" more relevant than ever before.

For the upcoming summer and fall registration cycles, online and video meetings will become a student's best friend. Several online platforms can make that happen, but my favorite is Zoom. The platform is dynamic and intuitive, and best of all, it is free for basic one-on-one use. But not everyone will perceive this technology -- or any other video technology, for that matter -- that easy to use. That is why advisers should consider the following steps to facilitate the transition for students from face-to-face to online advising.

First, if you are an adviser, you should take the time to learn which platform works best for your students. Whether it is Zoom or Skype or something else, play with your software of choice and make sure that you are comfortable using it. This will be time well spent, as many of your students stand to benefit, so you shouldn't feel as if you are wasting time blocking your calendars for it.

Second, students in your caseload will need to know that online advising is an option. At my institution, we use a scheduling software that does not allow students to schedule an online appointment. If that is the case at your college or university, too, send an initial email to your students informing them that even though they were previously unable to schedule an online appointment, online advising is now available to them.

Then, in a separate email, send them specific instructions on how to schedule that appointment. These instructions should include specifics about scheduling (i.e., how to inform the adviser that the meeting will be online), as well as details about getting familiar with the appropriate meeting platform. Since I use Zoom, I include in the email detailed instructions about downloading the necessary app or how the program functions in a browser. I also tell students where they can leave comments when they schedule their appointment. And I make sure to title the email subject line something like "Online Appointment Instructions (PLEASE READ!)."

Why two separate emails? That is so students can easily go back into their email and search for the subject line that will help them locate just the instructions. It also keeps the two emails shorter than they otherwise would be if they were combined, increasing the odds that a student will read both of them in their entirety.

In addition, at some point before meeting with your students online, you should conduct trial appointments with colleagues and co-workers to ensure that the process will go smoothly. Most advisers only get around half an hour to meet with their students, which is arguably too short already and is not the ideal time to troubleshoot software issues.

Once the appointment begins, you should set expectations and boundaries for the student. That means informing students of any time constraints you have with back-to-back appointments. With a face-to-face appointment, students are often able to check in to an office with someone there to assure them that even if a previous appointment goes over, the student's adviser will be with them shortly. In an online environment, no such person exists, particularly for offices that do not typically advise online. That means it is crucial for you to be punctual for each appointment, lest a student feel forgotten or ignored.

You should also provide students guidance about follow-up and how to obtain important resources. Students will not be able to leave an online appointment with physical notes and forms like they would in face-to-face meetings. But you can show them how to find such resources by navigating websites with Zoom's screen-share feature, for example. Likewise, you can take the opportunity to promote students' sense of responsibility by encouraging them to take their own notes as the session progresses.

Finally, as an appointment reaches its time limit, you should make sure that if the student has questions or concerns that you haven't been able to answer, they at least know how to get in touch with the appropriate parties for follow-up. Over the next several months, students probably will have questions about your institution's response to the virus -- questions that you may have never heard before. You will need to hone your relational competencies to assure students that, even in these uncertain times, administrators are working with their interests in mind. The more student appointments that end on a supportive and positive note, the better.

Why have I have chosen to recommend online appointments using videoconferencing software in favor of, say, a phone appointment? One reason is that in a time that may eventually be characterized by quarantine and isolation, you will still want to foster trusting and supportive relationships with students. While that can be done over the phone, videoconferencing offers both parties the benefits of facial expression and body language, for example, to help students feel connected to the institution. Also, this is an opportunity to move advising practices forward and develop innovate ways for campus support personnel to serve students.

With the spread of COVID-19 -- and with institutions limiting and in sometimes eliminating in-person classes for the coming months -- advisers need to explore new approaches to give students the guidance and support they need without potentially putting themselves and others at risk. This crisis compels us to accommodate students in creative and meaningful ways that might not have occurred without the threat of global pandemic. Shifts in higher education practice are often relatively slow, but this is one that ought to happen sooner rather than later.

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Advisers will need to develop new means of working with students given COVID-19 (opinion)

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Administrators at college and university campuses have started to urge faculty members to be flexible with students amid the current COVID-19 outbreak, recommending that physical contact and the exchange of physical items (e.g., graded papers and assignments) be limited. The same is true for staff working in student services, including admissions specialists, recruiters, academic coaches, counselors and academic advisers.

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The Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative

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"Students are humans first. The more a student feels connected to and understood by their college of university, the more likely they are to stay enrolled and engaged. The language you use to communicate about the response to COVID19 matters-it must convey care along with urgency. Consider using multiple platforms and modes to reach students. Reassuring videos from administrators, staff, and faculty would be especially effective." -- Check out this guide from The Hope Center (Temple University) for more guidance on supporting your students in a difficult time.

"Most of what we do in-person is by inertia, not intentionality, and it's rarely optimal. Use all the new options and experiments from your remote time to figure out your optimal"-- check out this Twitter thread from Kris Shaffer about taking care of yourself while moving to a telecommunting/online work mode.

"Be kind to yourself and your students. Everyone is stressed, even if they're playing cool. That includes faculty. And that's okay."-- this Facebook post by Amy Young has great advice about caring for yourself and your students (and some of the other things covered on this page).

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Continuity with Care | The Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative

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As we prepare to deal with the reality of COVID19 at PSU, the staff of the CoLab has been assembling advice and resources for faculty. We've organized this into three main sections, focusing on setting realistic goals, caring for yourself and your students, and preparing for specific teaching situations.

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I like Discord because it's very easy to use, and is highly reliable. Students are familiar with it, as well. You can set Roles and Permissions, just like in Zoom, and you can make small servers within a server for different Groups. It doesn't have Video capability, but it is the way I've been keeping in touch with students remotely while I wait for ConferZoom to approve my account.

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...where you can belong to a school club, a gaming group, or a worldwide art community. Where just you and a handful of friends can spend time together. A place that makes it easy to talk every day and hang out more often.

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Discord | Your Place to Talk and Hang Out

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Discord is the easiest way to talk over voice, video, and text. Talk, chat, hang out, and stay close with your friends and communities.

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I show this video to my students and ask them to write about these questions:
How would you describe the type of feedback the students gave?
How would you describe the way the students delivered that feedback?
What can we learn about peer feedback from this video?

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critique and feedback - the story of austin's butterfly - Ron Berger

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World History Topics Youtube Channel - Professor Anupama Mande, Fullerton College

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World History Topics Youtube Channel - Professor Anupama Mande, Fullerton College

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG9iSUMa5UENV_KlvLkN_fQ/videos

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Public Statement of Library Copyright Specialists: Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching & Research

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Public Statement of Library Copyright Specialists: Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching & Research

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Public Statement: Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching & Research

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Online tutor who thoroughly explains explains material in a multitude of subjects

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Khan Academy is a nonprofit providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Our interactive practice problems, articles, and videos help students succeed in math, biology, chemistry, physics, history, economics, finance, grammar, and many other topics. Khan Academy provides teachers with data on how their students are doing so they can identify gaps in learning and provide tailored instruction. We also offer free personalized SAT and LSAT practice in partnership with the College Board and the Law School Admission Council. Our resources have been translated into dozens of languages, and 15 million people around the globe learn on Khan Academy each month. Want to extend your learning beyond YouTube? Practice what you’ve just discovered for free: www.khanacademy.org

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Online tutor who thoroughly explains various subjects in STEM related material. Math, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, etc...

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This channel focuses on providing tutorial videos on organic chemistry, general chemistry, physics, algebra, trigonometry, precalculus, and calculus. Disclaimer: Some of the links associated with the videos in my channel may generate affiliate commissions on my behalf. As an amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases that you may make through such affiliate links.

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Online Calculator with step by step solutions to further help with mathematical comprehension.

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Number Line

Solve problems from Pre Algebra to Calculus step-by-step

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Is there a step by step calculator for math?

Symbolab is the best step by step calculator for a wide range of math problems, from basic arithmetic to advanced calculus and linear algebra. It shows you the solution, graph, detailed steps and explanations for each problem.

Is there a step by step calculator for physics?

Symbolab is the best step by step calculator for a wide range of physics problems, including mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and thermodynamics. It shows you the steps and explanations for each problem, so you can learn as you go.

How to solve math problems step-by-step?

To solve math problems step-by-step start by reading the problem carefully and understand what you are being asked to find. Next, identify the relevant information, define the variables, and plan a strategy for solving the problem.

Related Symbolab blog posts

My Notebook, the Symbolab way

Math notebooks have been around for hundreds of years. You write down problems, solutions and notes to go back...

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Free Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus, Geometry, Statistics and Chemistry calculators step-by-step

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Uh oh! Wolfram|Alpha doesn't run without JavaScript.

Please enable JavaScript. If you don't know how, you can find instructions . Once you've done that, refresh this page to start using Wolfram|Alpha.

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Wolfram|Alpha: Making the world's knowledge computable

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Compute answers using Wolfram's breakthrough technology & knowledgebase, relied on by millions of students & professionals. For math, science, nutrition, history, geography, engineering, mathematics, linguistics, sports, finance, music...

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Crowdsourced learning assistance.

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Slader :: Homework Answers and Solutions

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Tomorrow's answer's today! Find correct step-by-step solutions for ALL your homework for FREE!

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Does anyone have recommendations for fairly simple tools within Canvas to use with ELL students? Thanks in advance for any help with this!

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Moving Classes Online on Short Notice: Some Strategies

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Created by Wayfinding Online Series participant Stephanie Caranica, FYE Success Coach, Moorpark College

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  "Realize that you are not alone, that we are in this together and most importantly that there is hope." -Deepika Padukone​

We at FYE invite you to join us for these virtual community sessions, where you will have the chance to chat with us and your peers, as you re-learn to navigate life as a college student. Many of these sessions are intended to be community builders, where you will receive a support system and know that you are not alone.

Grab your coffee or tea, and join us each week for a session!

Virtual Community Hours

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"Realize that you are not alone, that we are in this together and most importantly that there is hope." -Deepika Padukone​ We at FYE invite you to join us for these virtual community sessions, where you will have the chance to chat with us and your peers, as you re-learn to navigate life as a college student.

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The Learning Never Stops: Preparing to Teach in an Emergency

Emergency power shut-offs. Fire evacuations. Pandemic quarantines.

The list of emergencies that could require you to temporarily move your course online seems to be growing every day. CVC-OEI provides a robust set of instructional resources for Canvas and online course design that can aid faculty, administrators, and instructional support staff with the transition of on-campus courses into the distance education modality.

Don't wait for disaster to strike - check out these resources and prepare now.

CVC-OEI Emergency Preparedness Resources : P lanning for uninterrupted instruction and student support in the event on-campus courses need to temporarily move online.

Course Design Rubric : The CVC-OEI Course Design Rubric can be used as a checklist for instructors who are moving instruction from the classroom to the Canvas common course management system. The Rubric guides instructors on setting up a course with clear navigation, regular effective contact, effective assessments, and accessibility compliance.

Canvas Support Portal : This one-stop resource includes links to the CCC Canvas Home Base, a Canvas Community where users can access text and video user guides and post questions to the Canvas Community.

Byte Sized Canvas Videos : These short, desktop video tutorials provide pedagogical and technological tips on the use of Canvas.

Student to Student Interactions This Pocket PD Guide shows instructors how to meet the student-student interaction requirement that is now part of the Title 5 Education Code for California Community College Distance Education courses (Instructor Contact, Section 55204 ).

Colleges needing to quickly prepare faculty to teach online in the case of an emergency can download courses from CVC-OEI/@ONE and adapt them to use locally. Fourteen "CVC-OEI Adoptable" courses can be found in Canvas Commons, including Adoptable Courses: Introduction to Online Teaching & Learning , Introduction to Course Design, and Introduction to Designing for Accessibility .

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The Learning Never Stops: Preparing to Teach in an Emergency - Online Network of Educators

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Emergency power shut-offs. Fire evacuations. Pandemic quarantines. The list of emergencies that could require you to temporarily move your course online seems to be growing every day. CVC-OEI provides a robust set of instructional resources for Canvas and online course design that can aid faculty, administrators, and instructional support staff with the transition of on-campus courses into the distance education modality.

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Online Whiteboard app -- can make screencast videos -- Free now for closed schools
https://explaineverything.com/

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Create interactive lessons, record video tutorials and collaborate real-time with your students.

Explain Everything, the leading digital whiteboard platform for delivering engaging lessons, is now joining Promethean.
Learn more ➜

Create interactive lessons, record video tutorials and collaborate real-time with your students.

Utilize the full power of an interactive whiteboard

Explain Everything is the leading interactive whiteboard for teaching.
Loved by 24+ M teachers and students across the globe. Check for yourself.

Create interactive presentations

Create or import an already existing presentation. Make it fun! Draw and add more slides to engage your students.

Record whiteboard videos & tutorials

Turn your teaching materials into quick tutorials and explanation videos. Share it instantly with anyone, anytime.

Collaborative projects with students

Create group assignments and let your students work on collaborative projects together. Teach them the value of teamwork.

We are on a mission to help educators provide engaging and effective learning experiences in any teaching scenario.

Meet the teacher template

Introduce yourself to your students and their parents in a warm and welcoming way. This customizable template allows you to share important information about yourself, your teaching philosophy, contact details, and classroom policies. Open template

Well-planned lessons enable teachers to make the most of the time they have with their students. Use this free template to focus on delivering meaningful content, engaging activities, and effective assessments to enhance student learning outcomes. Open template

Start off your lesson with a little icebreaker. Lesson plan templates bring structure, efficiency, and clarity to the lesson planning process, enabling teachers to deliver effective and engaging instruction that aligns with educational goals and standards. Open template

A multiplication chart is a versatile tool that can be used in various ways to support students' understanding and mastery of multiplication. Open template

Math axis template perfect for student assignments. Use this template to create visually appealing axes, and plot mathematical functions and data. Open template

This Pros and Cons template provides a straightforward structure to list the pros and cons of a specific topic without going into detailed explanations. Open template

Color theory is a fundamental concept in art, design, and various creative fields. Teach how colors interact, harmonize, and create different visual effects. Open template

Explain Everything explained in 4 minutes 🎉

Enhance your students' learning by making your
teaching materials interactive and fun. It's that easy.

Supercharge your teaching both
in the classroom and any hybrid model

Create presentations in minutes
Save a ton of time on lesson prep. Upload your already existing resources like PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, documents and files. Work on them paperlessly using an interactive whiteboard.

Whiteboard videos that stand out
Your presentation is ready? Perfect. Now turn it into a tutorial or instructional video. Just tap the Record button and start talking. Magic. Share it with students in seconds.

Online whiteboard for collaboration
Plan your lesson or assignment then collaborate in real-time with your students. Easily stay on the same page using collaborative sessions.

Explain Everything is your
all-in-one tool for engaging lessons

🧑🏼‍🏫 Tutoring

Explain any concept 1:1 or during group sessions. Use voice chat and collaborative editing to stay on the same page.

✏️ Assignments & lesson planning

Create activities that enhance students' learning. Provide personalized materials to help students understand concepts better.

⚙️ LMS & MDM Integrations

Adapt your teaching workflow to your preferences. Use your favorite integrations and share teaching materials with anyone, instantly.

You can be the next! Join 24 million of users!

Start free - upgrade anytime. No credit card required.
Joining as institution? Contact sales.

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Explain Everything | Interactive Whiteboard for Teaching

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Interactive whiteboard for teaching. Record video tutorials, create interactive presentations. Join 24+ million users of Explain Everything.

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Traveling With Integrity:Translating Face-to-Face Teacher Professional Learning to Online and Blended Spaces

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Traveling With Integrity:Translating Face-to-Face Teacher Professional Learning to Online and Blended Spaces

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Katz, Stump, Charney-Sirott, & Howlett JAAL  2019 (1)

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CirQLive Zoom Canvas Integration Guides 

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CirQLive Zoom Canvas Integration Guides 

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Make your use of Zoom and Zoom Webinar for online learning program in Canvas easier, more effective and efficient, saving time, money and energy!

​

Manuals

Please see our teacher explanation videos

Please see our student explanation videos

​

Advanced Scheduler Module

Never copy and paste a web conferencing link again:

​

As an admin for many courses - Scheduling on behalf of other teachers

Schedule single or multiple session with a few button clicks

Set multiple time zones

Secure unique links- We do not use personal meeting room links

Secure Office Hour Module

No more lobby waiting or asking students to leave...

​

Our office hour scheduler allows students and teachers to meet anyplace and anytime on any device they have nearby

For students- Chose a specific designated time, subject and question to ask the teacher.

For teachers- See which students have scheduled an office hour meeting with you, and what they want to ask about.

Secure and private links- no need to share a PMR and lock the room or ask students to leave. No issues with FERPA or students entering by mistake into another students session.

​

Recording and Attendance Modules

No more excuses to not see a recorded class ...

Manage recordings and attendance records

Auto access to recordings and attendance records

Students will have easy, auto and constant access to the recordings

No need to spend valuable time searching for or copying and pasting links of recordings

CSV download to organize accurate attendance records

​

Personal Calendar Module

Integrate with the personal calendar of your choice

​​

​​Email Reminder System

Never miss a class again...

​

Usage data and analytics

CirQlive provides usage data and analytics to better understand how your campus' Zoom platform is being used within your campus LMS

Some of the analytics includes...

number of scheduled events

log-ins per user

number of times a course is downloaded or viewed

number of past and future events scheduled and joined

These insights can better inform campus administration for decision making about utilization, professional development, IT expenditures, etc, and ultimately can help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of online learning programs.

CirQlive is a SaaS application

CirQlive provides dedicated support to get you up and running quick

​

No local installation is needed to get MEETS up and running because it is a SaaS application using the LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) standards. Configuration is simple, short, and straightforward. Faculty immediately benefit from the platform integration. The platform also works well with most SSO applications.

​

​

Secure web-conferencing management from within your LMS

For more information, please see our updated security document at https://documentation.cirqlive.com/meets_security.pdf

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​ Please see our teacher explanation videos Please see our student explanation videos ​ ​ As an admin for many courses - Scheduling on behalf of other teachers Schedule single or multiple session with a few button clicks Set multiple time zones Secure unique links- We do not use personal meeting room links Our office hour scheduler allows students and teachers to meet anyplace and anytime on any device they have nearby For students- Chose a specific designated time, subject and question to ask the teacher.

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By order of Governor Newsom's Stay at Home directive issued on March 19, 2020, Cerritos College will move to an online environment until further notice. Student courses have also transitioned to an online platform. Be safe and stay #CerritosStrong. Visit our COVID-19 information page for more details.

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By order of Governor Newsom's Stay at Home directive issued on March 19, 2020, Cerritos College will move to an online environment until further notice. Student courses have also transitioned to an online platform. Be safe and stay #CerritosStrong. Visit our COVID-19 information page for more details.

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Thought Piece on What to Prioritize in our Teaching Right Now

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Thought Piece on What to Prioritize in our Teaching Right Now

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Just last month, I launched my first book and started a book tour. When I planned my syllabi in January, I was worried about having some absences from classes and how to minimize the disruption of that for my students. Little did I know how truly upended our semester would become and how all my best-laid plans and contingency plans, of which I always have plenty, would also be out the window.

I also had no idea how prophetic the title of my new book, Welcome to Wherever We Are,would be or how the essential message of the book might inform how I am reshaping my pedagogy now. My book is about what we hold on to, what we let go of, how we remember others and how we're remembered. It's those questions that I am relying on now to structure how I move forward and how I will try to inspire my students to move forward.

Multiple times a day, I am bombarded with emails from companies across the country trying to capitalize on the recent shift to online teaching and learning because of COVID-19. They are looking to sell their goods and services to educators at a needy and vulnerable moment. At the same time, I have been receiving emails about my university going online and am involved in an online briefing about our future plans. And I've been invited to join groups on Facebook to strategize and share ideas about "pandemic pedagogy." One group has ballooned to over 23,000 members. Much of this is well intended. Much of it is also terrifyingly misguided. As a sociologist, I find all of it endlessly fascinating.

College is a chance for pause and thoughtful reflection, yet that is so often not how it feels even under normal circumstances. This is the time to do this, more than ever. The more this pedagogy ride keeps spinning, right alongside the relentless, panic-inducing blizzard of information and misinformation about the state of the world, the dizzier and more exhausted I feel. It's simply not the time to fetishize methods or to add more content or more to the to-do lists. A crisis should not prompt us to add more; it should encourage us to distill things to an essence and to model for students how and what to prioritize. Keep busy, they say. Get still and centered, I believe.

If you ever wondered what the McDonaldization of education looks like, here we are. We are being expected to rush it out, fast and hot, and many devoted faculty members feel pressured to supersize their content. I want to step back and ask, is this what we want to consume? Is this what will nourish and sustain us? Will this be good for our individual and collective bodies, minds and hearts?

In Parker Palmer's landmark book, The Courage to Teach, he writes, "The connections made by good teachers are held not in their methods but in their hearts -- meaning heart in its ancient sense, the place where intellect and emotion and spirit and will converge in the human self." Doing this requires great compassion for students, for oneself as a teacher and for the entire learning process. The spiritual teacher Sharon Salzberg describes compassion as "the quivering and trembling of the human heart." Right now, our hearts and bodies are certainly trembling, and we need compassion for our students and ourselves more than ever.

In the flurry of posts and emails, it's as if the big, important questions have gone missing. So many faculty members are wholly preoccupied with the basics of how to set up an online class with Zoom features, how to narrate PowerPoint slides, what to wear to teach online in a synchronous format, how to condense information into a new format, what videos to choose, how to record lectures with other people at home for students with their own set of responsibilities, how to prevent students from cheating on online exams -- the list is truly endless. Students are emailing about advising and extra credit.

It's understandable. When people are nervous, they fixate on the little they can control. This reminds me of when parents of college-bound students go into a buying frenzy before school starts. In all the frantic rushing around and back and forth trips to purchase and return at Bed, Bath & Beyond, Target and Walmart, some crucial conversations about big life issues seem to go missing.

What are we modeling for students when we engage in a frenzy about teaching methods and tools amid a global crisis that will have epic impacts on health care, economics, politics and human rights? Instead, what might we want to model? What do we really think our students need and want right now? What do we as educators most need and want right now?

For me, my goal is this simple and this complex: to try my best to be kind to myself as I move in and out of fear. In fact, I even sent that as a message to all of my students via Blackboard with an announcement that I will provide more information as I learn more and that I plan to streamline and simplify as much as possible going forward. By doing that, I was trying to convey to students the importance of early and direct communication, our shared humanity, my own sense of vulnerability, and the need for self-care.

If I had it my way, colleges and universities would eliminate grades this semester and move to a no-grade system or a satisfactory/unsatisfactory or pass/fail option. Again, what are we modeling as important? Yes, I was once that A student who would have wanted my A preserved rather than morphed into a passing grade. But in actuality, I would have also benefited from a structure of authority showing me the advantages of taming my self-expectations and loosening the stranglehold of perfectionism. We inhabit bureaucracies that we made, and we can demonstrate the creativity and ethical conviction to make necessary humane changes in them.

This shift to online and the issues it brings forth have convinced me more than ever that online teaching is much more about transferring information than about anything thoroughly transformative on intellectual and emotional levels. And things are bound to flop when methods drive and dictate content. In this current pandemic situation, online delivery is determining what we do with our students. That's a lot of power to hand over to a mode of learning and teaching that does not work for many students and educators and that often feels limiting and constraining.

Instead, right now, students in sociology might consider the sociology of the coronavirus, how private troubles are indeed public issues of the social structure and how existing social inequalities deepen the health crisis and the health crisis will create deeper social inequality. Students of art, English, theater, dance and music might consider the creative work that has emerged in response to the rockiest periods in our history. Business and hospitality students might consider the role of pandemic crises on the tourism industry and the lingering effects on community building. Surely, every discipline could make some connections here.

But I'm OK abandoning a lot of that also. So what if students wait and learn some of the concepts I hoped to share with them in future classes instead? They need not master them in an emergency. As older adults, most of us are scared and uneasy. Making myself busy with technology and loads of assignments to grade and discussion boards to monitor, with far too many students, is not going to accomplish anything for anyone. My focus will be on easing my fears and those of my students and doing anything that assists our mental and physical health.

I want this moment to be an opportunity for my students to pause and think about how they might be better and healthier selves, citizens and leaders in the face of uncertainty, crisis, fear and change. I want them to think about how and where they can be of the most service and how they can channel their energy to effect change. I will urge them to think about what they want to hold on to and what they could let go of, and I want them to think about how they want to be remembered. I want to encourage them to dream about how they can chart a course for and about hope, even and especially when it feels like there is none. Aren't these the eternal questions of the human condition and lessons we want to impart on and off campus? It just might be that this current emergency prompts us to re-evaluate our real purpose in teaching.

Often, at the end of a semester or even years later, when students share with me what they really got out of my classes, I hear time and time again how it was never really about the content as much as about how I showed up for and with them in moments of great fear, grief, loss, sadness and seismic shifts in their lives. It's about how I took them to their farthest edge, stood there with them bearing witness and paying attention, and didn't let them fall off. No amount of Zoom, Google, Moodle or Blackboard will ever make that happen.

Students often come to us wanting a degree. Yet when all is said and done, they suggest that they actually yearned for something else: a new lease on life, an alternative approach to how to craft a life worth living. And they look to us as their professors for how to do that. I can't imagine burying myself in online minutiae now. Worldwide health is too precarious, the world feels too uncertain and all that dis/ease feels frighteningly loud and overwhelming. I need and want what I instinctively believe my students need and want: reassuring leadership, humor, quiet and rest, joy and beauty, a departure from the mania, and a release to be still.

I'm reminded of a gorgeous poem, "Keeping Quiet" by Pablo Neruda, partially excerpted here:

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still,
for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much ...
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves ...

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Beyond focusing on educational delivery models, faculty should prioritize the essential truths they want students to learn (opinion)

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Many faculty members are so preoccupied with how to set up an online class that it's as if the big, important questions have gone missing, argues Deborah J. Cohan. We must also model for students how and what to prioritize.

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Canvas Student Guide - Table of Contents

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IntroductionHow can I use Canvas on my mobile device as a student? How do I sign up for a Canvas account as a student? AnnouncementsHow do I view

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Instructors--Resources for Using Canvas (ELAC)

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Instructors--Resources for Using Canvas (ELAC)

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Video: Accessing Canvas through PeopleSoft (Tip: It’s best to use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox when using Canvas)

Canvas Overview (Instructors)

Modules Overview (Instructors

Announcements Overview (Instructors)

Assignments Overview (Instructors)

Quizzes Overview (Instructors)

Discussions Overview (Instructors)

Gradebook Overview (Instructors)

Chat Overview (Instructors)

Publishing a Canvas Course (Instructors)

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Student Guide - How to View Annotated Feedback on Canvas Assignments

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Student Guide - How to View Annotated Feedback on Canvas Assignments

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Your instructor may choose to include comments directly in an assignment submission using inline comments, or annotations. If an assignment's submission details page includes a View Feedback button, you can view these annotated comments through a preview tool called Canvas DocViewer. You can also use Canvas DocViewer to reply to any comments or make your own annotations.

Some browsers may not initially render comments correctly when viewing feedback. If your browser includes a built-in PDF viewer, select the option to view the PDF in the system viewer. You can also download PDF files with comments to view on your computer. The settings required to view or print the annotations in the PDF vary based on the software installed on your computer.

Note: If the assignment attachment displays a Preview button instead of the View Feedback button, your file is not DocViewer compatible and will not include any annotated comments.

Open Grades

In Course Navigation, click the Grades link.

View Assignment Details

Click the title of an assignment.

View Feedback

Click the View Feedback button.

Note: If the assignment attachment displays a Preview button, your file is not DocViewer compatible.

View Annotated Comments

View the annotated comments from your instructor [1]. To reply to a comment, click on the comment and click the Reply button [2]. When an annotated comment includes multiple content lines, the content box displays an ellipses link [3]. To expand a comment, click the ellipses link. To view stacked replies, click the comment to expand all replies [4]. You can also use DocViewer to make your own annotations on your assignment.

Table of Contents > Assignments > How do I view annotation feedback comments from my instructor directly in my assignment submission?

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How do I view annotation feedback comments from... | Canvas LMS Community

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Your instructor may choose to include comments directly in an assignment submission using inline comments, or annotations. If an assignment's submission details page includes a View Feedback button, you can view these annotated comments through a preview tool called Canvas DocViewer. You can also use Canvas DocViewer to reply to any comments or make your own annotations.

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US Department of Education

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LINCS | Adult Education and Literacy | U.S. Department of Education

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The U. S. Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), Division of Adult Education and Literacy (DAEL) funds digital literacy initiatives to enable adult learners to succeed in a range of academic activities, including STEM and college and career readiness. These initiatives enhance the integration of technology into instruction, increase student access to technology and leverage learning outside the classroom.

Resources for Students

Resources for Teachers and Tutors

Resources for Programs

Connected Teaching and Personalized Learning: Implications of the National Education Technology Plan (NETP) for Adult Education lays out a broad vision and applies these concepts to the adult education field and adult learners who are not currently connected to an established program. It follows the structure of the National Education Technology Plan (NETP) 2010 by addressing five areas of concern-Learning, Assessment, Teaching, Infrastructure, and Productivity. The 2016 Plan, Future Ready Learning: Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education articulates a vision of equity, active use, and collaborative leadership to make everywhere, all-the-time learning possible.

Educational Technology in Corrections 2015 informs corrections and correctional education administrators as they explore ways to securely and cost effectively provide advanced technologies in corrections facilities to help strengthen and expand educational and reentry services.

Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Using Technology to Support Learning is based on the booklet, Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Supporting Learning and Motivation. A panel of practitioners and participants who use technology to support learning and motivation discussed what has worked well and what has promise in the years to come.

Integrating Technology in WIOA highlights the places in Title II, Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, in which technology plays a supporting role in the improvement of teaching, learning, professional development, productivity, and system efficiencies.

Reboot Your Digital Strategy! highlights efforts by OCTAE and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to work together to enhance the digital literacy of youths and adults with low skills.

Webinar for Older Americans Month - Blaze a New Trail Online: Resources for Seniors! was created by several key partners to highlight resources for professionals who work with seniors to address their digital literacy and broadband adoption needs. See video and links to resources.

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The U. S. Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), Division of Adult Education and Literacy (DAEL) funds digital literacy initiatives to enable adult learners to succeed in a range of academic activities, including STEM and college and career readiness.

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ESL/ELL Interactive Websites for Learning

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ESL/ELL Interactive Websites for Learning

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Research Guides: ESL/ELL Education: Interactive Websites for Learning

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Research Guides: ESL/ELL Education: Interactive Websites for Learning

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Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners Online

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Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners Online

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Center for Teaching and Learning | Wiley Education Services

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English languages learners (ELLs) can enrich any classroom with their depth of knowledge of other cultures, languages, and traditions. But along with their diverse perspectives, ELLs bring a diverse set of needs to native English-speaking classrooms. ELLs often need additional support to succeed, and as the number of these students continues to rise in American classrooms, it's important that instructors understand the challenges ELLs face. This article explores how you can adapt or enhance typical online best practices with ELLs in mind to support these students with new material they'll encounter and to help them manage the challenges posed by learning in a non-native language.

Frequent Feedback

Studies have shown that lack of personal interaction in the online classroom can negatively impact students' motivation (Costa-Guerra & Costa-Guerra, 2015), and this can be especially true for ELLs. Maintaining frequent contact is beneficial for all students, but it's key to ensuring success for students being challenged to process language and master new content. Below are different ways you can provide frequent feedback beyond traditional graded assignments:

Establish optional office hours. Frequently remind students to take advantage of your "open door."

For larger projects, allow students to submit their assignments in incremental stages so they can receive feedback and make adjustments before receiving a final grade.

In automatically scoring assessments, provide feedback beyond "correct" and "incorrect." Students should learn why an answer is incorrect and receive guidance or recommendations for specific sources that clarify and explain.

Provide an optional peer-review forum as a place where students can interact and edit each other's assignments prior to submitting them to you, the instructor.

By providing several opportunities for feedback, you'll help ELLs feel comfortable asking for assistance when they encounter unfamiliar language or cultural references. In addition, frequently checking for understanding trains ELLs to monitor their own sense of understanding so they will be quicker to spot gaps and seek help when necessary (Ferlazzo, 2016).

Rubrics

Rubrics are essential tools for any instructor, but they're particularly beneficial for instructors who have ELLs in their classrooms. Students unaccustomed to American schooling may have had no experience writing academic papers. For example, you might assign students to write a short reflection or annotated bibliography, which American students will likely understand without additional explanation. However, ELLs may make a good-faith effort at the assignment but produce content that doesn't reflect the proper format, and the resulting low grade may cause frustration and even mistrust toward you, the instructor, for not providing the information ELLs needed to succeed (Rowe, n.d.). Thus, it's important that you specifically state your expectations and break down each part of the assignment on which you'll assess students. Rubrics address this need.

In addition to providing a written rubric, consider going over the rubric and instructions verbally (perhaps via a short video recording) to give students multiple opportunities to understand what you want (Ferlazzo, 2016). A well-designed rubric will make it easier for students not only to refer to your expectations as they work through the assignment, but to learn from mistakes once they receive a grade and feedback from you. In that way, they' be able to adjust their approach on future assignments to earn higher grades and, more importantly, mastery of learning objectives.

Scaffolding to Fill in Prior Knowledge Gaps

Many students who either have moved to the United States or are taking American online courses from overseas haven't had much (if any) exposure to American K-12 school content. U.S. history, English, and literature courses, in particular, can be particularly challenging for such students. When an assignment requires students to connect new learning objectives to previous knowledge, you can't assume students (especially ELLs) have mastered prior foundational content such as American history, literature, culture, and educational standards.

For these students, you'll often need to provide background information that's necessary for understanding the new material. For example, you might compose a preface or provide background information as part of the assignment instructions. When more extensive background reading is necessary, direct students to a resource that imparts information in an accessible way. Providing these resources allows ELLs to explore topics as needed, and will help ensure all students have the opportunity to succeed.

The chart below provides examples of assignments and additional resources to help scaffold instruction for ELLs.

Assignment

Challenge for ELLs

Suggestions for Scaffolding Your Instruction

Choose a prominent person from U.S. history and explain his or her impact on modern legislation.

ELLs may be unfamiliar with most U.S. historical figures.

Provide a list of examples of prominent people relevant to this assignment, along with a brief description of each person.

Provide links to one or two specific resource websites to help ELLs gain a basic understanding of modern U.S. legislative workings.

Encourage students to "check in." Who have they decided to research? Do they seem to have a solid, if rudimentary, grasp of the legislative process?

The environment and the landscape greatly influenced the style of Native American architecture. Select two pieces of Native American architecture and explain how their styles are still relevant.

ELLs may not be able to make connections between architectural forms and landscape without background knowledge of Native Americans.

Provide one or two specific websites that show and describe the land and climate of Native American regions and the various tribes who lived in each.

Link to a Native American glossary so students can quickly reference unfamiliar terms, particularly architectural ones.

Write a four-page paper in APA format about Isaac Newton. Include at least five references in your paper.

APA, MLA, and other style guides will likely be new to ELLs.

Be precise with your wording when giving an assignment. Your description should clarify what students should focus on as they research.

Link to websites that explain what APA style entails.

Provide links for explaining citations.

Provide a link to a plagiarism checker so students can guarantee they have cited their papers appropriately.

Multiple Forms of Assessments

It's important for English language learners to have flexibility in choosing how they'll demonstrate content mastery. After all, assessing language skills is different than assessing content skills, and for most courses, content mastery is the more important objective (Alrubail, 2016). Thus, providing multiple options for assessments-not just written assignments-takes the burden off demonstrating language skills and instead emphasizes demonstrating content mastery. This will not only keep the focus on learning, but also reduce some of the stress of the assessment itself.

Universal Design for Learning principles apply here. For example, instead of mandating that every student write a paper, you could allow students to create PowerPoint presentations with voiceovers, take a screencast of themselves reviewing different online resources, or even draw a mind map or other artistic expression to demonstrate their understanding of the material. Providing these options allows both ELLs and native English speakers to engage in the learning style and domain of language they excel in (Nesbitt, 2015). As mentioned earlier, clear rubrics with expectations stated in a simple, straightforward manner are essential, particularly when you allow multiple options for demonstrating mastery. Be aware of the verbs that you use in your rubric that may dictate the medium in which students demonstrate their mastery.

Conclusion

By enrolling in your class, English language learners have chosen to challenge themselves to learn in a language not native to them. As an instructor, you can ease many of their challenges by taking the time to understand the areas where they might need some assistance and provide additional materials and clarification where needed. If you apply some of the strategies from this article, you can help any ELLs enrolled in your class work toward your learning objectives just as successfully as native English speakers.

References

Alrubail, R. (2016, July 7). Equity for English-language learners [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/equity-for-english-language-learners-rusul-alrubail

Costa-Guerra, B., & Costa-Guerra, L. (2015, March). Do online courses help or hinder English language learners' experience with math credit recovery? Retrieved from http://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=2745842

Ferlazzo, L. (2016, November 3). Do's and don'ts for teaching English-language learners [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/esl-ell-tips-ferlazzo-sypnieski

Nesbitt, J. (2015, September 9). 4 strategies to help ELLs in the mainstream classroom [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/strategies-help-ells-mainstream-classroom-joylynn-nesbitt

Rowe, E. (n.d.). ESL writing rubrics. In Academic Subjects for English Language Learners. Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/esl-writing-rubrics.html

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Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners in the Online Classroom - Center for Teaching and Learning | Wiley Education Services

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English languages learners (ELLs) can enrich any classroom with their depth of knowledge of other cultures, languages, and traditions. But along with their diverse perspectives, ELLs bring a diverse set of needs to native English-speaking classrooms. ELLs often need additional support to succeed, and as the number of these students continues to rise in American classrooms, it's important that instructors understand the challenges ELLs face.

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Snagit is our screen capture and recording tool that lets users quickly create and share images and videos to:

Create training content, tutorials, lessons and step-by-step instructions

Record meetings and presentations, including your webcam to keep a personal element

Create how to training materials, software walk-throughs, and demos

Pre-record academic lectures or supplemental learning content to share with students

Create instructions on how to use online learning platforms, or remote working software

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Snagit is our screen capture and recording tool that lets users quickly create and share images and videos to: Create training content, tutorials, lessons and step-by-step instructions Record meetings and presentations, including your webcam to keep a personal element Create how to training materials, software walk-throughs, and demos Pre-record academic lectures or supplemental learning content to share with students Create instructions on how to use online learning platforms, or remote working software

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The posting below gives some excellent advice on conducting live chat sessions with your students. It is from Chapter 4 - Choosing Your Course Format and Features, in the book Online Teaching in the Digital Age, by Pat Swenson and Nancy A. Taylor, California State University, Northridge, in Northridge, California. https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/books. Copyright 2012 by SAGE Publications, Inc. SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, California 91320. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Seven Principles for Fostering Greater Use of Assessment Results

Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning

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Synchronicity: The Real-Time Virtual Classroom

If you choose to conduct your course synchronously, you will be in for a lively and invigorating experience! Real-time chat can be an enjoyable feature because the live format provides you with an opportunity to bond with your students. You may even have the chance to "see" their faces (as they will yours) if your LMS [Learning Management System] allows participants to upload images and avatars. You will have the opportunity to "hear" their voices, and in turn, they get to "hear" yours.

Moderating a Chat Session

Conducting a live chat session takes patience and a solid system. By providing an online handout on chat etiquette (see more about Internet etiquette in our appendices), you will be establishing a how-to-behave-online contract between you and your students. Students will understand the rules of participation, and they will understand that they must respect others. Creating guidelines for chat and disseminating them prior to the first class meeting will help you to maintain an orderly and prosperous live discussion.

When instructors choose to utilize real-time chat in their online curriculum, some common questions arise:
- What happens if I encounter technical difficulties? What do I do if the chat malfunctions and students get logged off?
- My students are so experienced chatting online, and I've never stepped foot inside a chat room. How will I be able to control and conduct a chat session?
- How do I sustain an in-depth and productive class discussion (one that engages and involves the majority of students) over the

entire designated chat time?
- How do I deal with inactive, absent, or rude participants?

Except for the technical difficulties, you would respond to these questions as if you were conducting an in-person traditional class. Most chat systems record participants: when and how often a student logs on and off and how many times a student participates. If a technical glitch occurs and the system goes down, simply encourage all participants ahead of time to find their way back into the chat room. The LMS re-records the names of those who re-enter the chat room. If the system remains down for several minutes, you may need to send an email with further instructions to your class LISTSERV. If chat goes down but the rest of the LMS is working, you can send your students back into a discussion forum to engage in a thoughtful dialogue by posting additional responses to peers. It's the rare occasion when you will be forced to cancel the remainder of a class due to a lengthy system failure, but it can occur.

The LMS essentially takes roll for you each time a student logs on. However, it is important for students to realize that there is a distinction between logging on and participating in a chat. We recommend taking roll based on participants; merely noting that someone has logged on does not ensure that they actually have a chat room presence. The most effective way to ensure that students partake of and read the chat is to require that they participate. Students who remain idle for long periods of time may not be paying attention to the discussion. They may not even be in front of their computers! That's why we have a chat participation rule on our syllabus:

In order to earn credit for participating in a chat, each student must make at least ___ quality thoughtful comment(s) per discussion. Fulfilling this mandatory requirement illustrates that you are satisfactorily interacting with the material.

By clearly mandating active participation and succinctly stating this policy on your syllabus, you encourage students to take responsibility for their own educations, and equally as important, you empower them through this required exchange of ideas. When you mandate participation, you maximize participation. Expect many students to "raise their hands" voluntarily (an exclamation point for a comment, a question mark for a question - for more etiquette rules, please see our appendices). Since the chat screen can scroll quickly when there is a lot of participation, we suggest that you keep a pad and pen handy, so you can write down the names of the students and call on them in the order in which they raise their hands. Although this allows for an orderly and structured method to conducting the course discussion, occasionally you will, as we have, miss a student's name as the conversations can at times go by at a rapid pace. This is normal, and your student may bring it to your attention. Simply apologize, and place them next on the list.

If you notice that a particular student has not been participating, feel free to call on that student. Despite the fact that many students feel safer and more secure speaking through a computer keyboard, some students are painfully shy and reticent. For these types of students, we suggest that you have a list of simple questions nearby to pull from and then encourage these students to speak out by giving a short opinion. After a few responses, you will see your shy students begin to feel comfortable responding in a supportive online environment.

Remember that, if you require all of your students to participate, the list of raised hands may be long. If students are impatient, they may assume they have been skipped over and may click the enter button before you call on them. Gently remind students to avoid speaking out of turn, and encourage them to be patient and orderly. If a particular student speaks out of turn repeatedly or is rude or overly critical, then a brief email reminding the student of online etiquette rules, including your policy on respecting others, usually solves the problem. If you find that there is general impatience and frustration resulting from a long list of participants, you could limit the number of responders per topic or discussion question.

The key to live chat is to engage your participants by keeping the discussion both active and moving forward. Since the success of live chat depends primarily on student involvement and secondarily on live lecture, prepare a list of discussion questions, and keep these handy. Always prepare more than you need just in case. Then, simply check each completed item off your list. Remember that you control the tempo and topic. The more backup items that you bring to the table, the more at ease and in control you will feel. What is most crucial to your success? You will feel confident conducting a live chat session if your etiquette rules are clear, if you take charge and call on your students as they raise their hands, and if you encourage them, through your own example, to show respect to all participants.

One of the most effective aspects of real-time discussion is the ability to have instantaneous communication. Many students thrive in this invigorating environment, and so will you! If you choose not to include live chat or you are not offered a synchronous course, you still have the option to incorporate a live element into your classroom by maintaining a live virtual office hour. You will come to find that your students will feel more connected and bonded to you if they can speak with you live - they will feel as if they are actually with you in your office.

Small-Group Chat Rooms

In the synchronous online class, small-group chat rooms can be one of the most integral and engaging portions of an online course, and they will make your whole-class chats that much more engaging. Small-group chat rooms provide excellent avenues for students to bond with one another as this venue offers a multitude of opportunities to discuss course material in more depth. This group activity is very conducive, if not necessary, to ensure successful live group presentations, should you include them in your curriculum. Assigning five to six students per small group seems to be an effective number for productive discourse. One of these group members can then be selected to moderate a group presentation in your whole-class chat room. As with all group activities, choose your participants wisely! Avoid placing all of the vocal, high-profile students together in one group. When sorting groups in the LMS, make sure that you include yourself as a member of each group so you can participate in each group chat room when necessary.

Taking attendance and monitoring participation in small groups is relatively simple as long as your LMS system allows you to automatically record and store chat sessions (most LMSs allow for this feature). If small-group chat follows a whole-class discussion forum, then the attendance is usually pretty solid. Most students really enjoy the experience and intimacy of small groups, and we've often found that the students conduct themselves in lively and intelligent manners. With such a small number of participants, many of your more rigorous etiquette rules, such as mandating your students to raise their hands, will not apply. Many have commented to us that small-group chat is one of their favorite aspects of our courses (and much less stressful than whole-class chat), for they appreciate the opportunity to express more in-depth thoughts on the course material.

We set permanent small groups (more preferable to us than fluid groups) at the beginning of the semester, usually after the third week when enrollment has settled. Set up groups as you would in a traditional classroom. Group members can be randomly selected, chosen alphabetically, chosen based on a mixture of compatibility and skill, or selected based on student preference. Although we ask our students if they would like to work with an individual or a group of individuals, we make sure the groups have a balance of vocal, confident, and competent students. One must consider attrition and the consequences of having a live chat presentation decimated by absent and absent-minded students!

Adding Variety: Mixing Chat and Forums

Your synchronous virtual classroom will most likely contain a mix of small-group and whole-class chat rooms along with small-group and whole-class discussion forums. It is vital that the meeting times and lengths for each component be made clear on your schedule and on the LMS course page. We suggest posting highly visible links to the chat rooms and forums next to the times of the activities.

When setting up your synchronous course, you'll want to consider how to best keep the students engaged during the lengthy three-hour meeting time. Real-time chat discussion works most effectively if it follows a whole-class forum discussion. Since forums are essentially teacher-free, they provide a safe exchange of ideas. So, beginning your weekly class with a whole-class forum discussion enhances live chat since students will have had the opportunity to bounce their ideas off one another. Forum discussions, when they precede chat, encourage student participation in the live chat room. Think of forum discussions as a warm-up exercise for chat discussions.

When discussion forums serve as part of a three-hour class block, we recommend requiring the students to post their initial responses early in order to maximize the effectiveness of live discussion time. Then, you can set aside the first hour of your class meeting for students to return to the forum to respond to their peers. Depending on the breadth of your forum prompt, you can also ask students to post their initial analyses and peer responses all within the first hour. As previously suggested in our asynchronous section above, you may require students to respond to responses made to their original post to increase the dialogue between the students - we recommend trying this approach at least once, so you can see how it increases the dialogue in your other live discussions, such as chat. After students have had the opportunity to read and respond to their peers' ideas, continue the discussion in live chat. Designate a firm cut-off time and lateness policy for forum posts, so students don't continue posting in the forum during your live chat session.

Maximize your students' attention and participation by scheduling a variety of short and long activities into your weekly agenda; after your one-hour discussion forum, designate a one-half to one-hour small-group chat, followed by a one-hour whole-class chat, or skip the small-group option and simply engage in a two-hour whole-class live chat discussion. Should you choose a longer chat session, be sure to schedule in a five- or ten-minute break here and there - it will do wonders to help you and your students keep focused on the conversation. Again, clearly indicate all meeting times and locations, so everyone will be in the designated place at the correct time.

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Synchronicity: The Real-Time Virtual Classroom

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The posting below gives some excellent advice on conducting live chat sessions with your students. It is from Chapter 4 - Choosing Your Course Format and Features, in the book Online Teaching in the Digital Age, by Pat Swenson and Nancy A. Taylor, California State University, Northridge, in Northridge, California.

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This wikiHow teaches you how to create a new document in Google Docs on a computer, phone, or tablet. Google Docs is a free word processing app you can use to create, edit, and share text-based documents with others. Go to...

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California Department of Education Resources that Support Distance Learning

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California Department of Education Resources that Support Distance Learning

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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Main Web Page
Distance Learning Main Web Page

This information was formerly titled Distance Learning published on March 17, 2020.

On March 13, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-26-20 regarding the physical closure of schools by local educational agencies (LEAs) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The order provides that even if schools close temporarily because of COVID-19, LEAs will continue to receive state funding for those days so that they can:

Continue delivering high-quality educational opportunities to students to the extent feasible through, among other options, distance learning and/or independent study;

Provide school meals in non-congregate settings through the Summer Food Service Program and Seamless Summer Option, consistent with the requirements of the California Department of Education and U.S. Department of Agriculture;

Arrange for, to the extent practicable, supervision for students during ordinary school hours; and

Continue to pay employees.

This guidance provides a framework for how LEAs can continue to deliver high-quality educational opportunities to students when the school site is physically closed and the LEA has suspended onsite instruction. In providing this instruction, it is critical that LEAs take steps to ensure that these opportunities are available to all students to the greatest extent possible, including economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities, and English learners.

Distance Learning

This document provides guidance concerning how districts can provide distance learning opportunities for students. In addition to the guidance, a set of Appendices provides curated distance learning resources and information about contributions from many organizations that you can use to expand access for students to WiFi, devices, and learning opportunities that are not device-dependent. CDE is also connecting with other vendors, including publishers, who are providing free access to their materials, products, and programs over the coming months.

We anticipate that the list of resources will be regularly updated. That information will be available on the CDE Coronavirus (COVID-19) web page and updated on an ongoing basis. CDE will also update this guidance as necessary to reflect additional information as it becomes available. In addition, educators can learn more about how to teach on-line through any of a number of courses, including those listed on Get Educated and here Google for Education .

Considerations for Developing a Distance Learning Plan

For the purpose of this guidance, "distance learning" means instruction in which the student and instructor are in different locations. This may include interacting through the use of computer and communications technology, as well as delivering instruction and check-in time with their teacher. Distance learning may include video or audio instruction in which the primary mode of communication between the student and instructor is on-line interaction, instructional television, video, telecourses, or other instruction that relies on computer or communications technology. It may also include the use of print materials incorporating assignments that are the subject of written or oral feedback.

School districts, county offices of education, and charter schools (local educational agencies/LEAs) should immediately begin developing a plan for distance learning for their students and providing training and professional development for their teachers to implement the adopted distance learning strategy as effectively as possible. LEAs will need to assess their ability to deliver instruction both in an online setting and also in a non-technological setting, keeping in mind that not all children and families have access to devices or high-speed internet, and that the LEA may not be able to meet the needs of all its students through online instruction.

Elements of the plan might include, but not be limited to, the following:

Short- and long-term goals, accounting for the length of time currently planned for the school site to be closed and for the possibility that the closure may need to be extended based on the best evidence available in the future

Plan to assist teachers in analyzing the course sequence prior to closure so that they can develop a plan to cover the content and standards necessary to complete the planned course syllabus and to provide training on how to continue to deliver instruction

Continuum of delivery options for various grade levels, such as a fully online curriculum or online curriculum with individualized or small group interaction with teachers.

Continuum of delivery methods, such as a combination of technology, innovative use of other media (such as television), paper packets, or onsite meetings for a limited number of students, consistent with social distancing requirements

Plan for how to allow teachers to engage with one another to calibrate on offerings for students, exchange of effective practices, or adjusting approaches to ensure engagement with students.

This document is organized to provide specific guidance for different scenarios a school or district may need to consider in order to create a plan for distance learning during this time of school closures. In addition, Appendix 1 offers a wide range of resources, and Appendix 2 offers concrete guidance for remote learning assembled by a number of California districts and county offices, led by the Riverside County Office of Education. It treats issues of pedagogy and accessibility, offering wide-ranging content, tools, and resources, as well as advice about infrastructure and devices. Appendix 3 offers guidance for developing an on-line course.

Considerations to Ensure Equity and Access for All Students

Although many families have the devices and appropriate connectivity in place, the most at-risk children whom LEAs serve may not. Fortunately, because state assessments require students to be familiar with working digitally, many LEAs have already developed a framework for incorporating digital materials into every day instructional practice. LEAs should build on that work, including any pre-existing assessment of access to devices and internet connectivity for their students and in the community, as they plan to implement distance learning strategies during the physical closures of schools in response to COVID-19.

In these difficult times, we cannot lose track of the needs of our most disadvantaged students. LEAs will need to solve a variety of concerns about access, which this guidance seeks to support. Importantly, the California Constitution prohibits LEAs from requiring students to purchase devices or internet access, to provide their own devices, or otherwise pay a fee as a condition of accessing required course materials under the free schools guarantee. Additionally, California law requires that all students have access to standards-aligned textbooks or instructional materials in the core subjects, for use in class and to take home. This standard is grounded in the principle of equal educational opportunity under the California Constitution.

Depending on the extent to which students have access to devices and internet at home, LEAs should assess whether an e-learning/distance learning strategy would provide the most meaningful educational opportunity for students and, if so, steps they can take to ensure equitable access. It's important to note that equitable access does not require that LEAs offer the exact same content through the same channel for all students. Instead of abandoning a promising e-learning approach because not all students will have equal access to it from home, the plan should include an analysis of alternate deliveries of comparable educational content. These alternate deliveries might include providing students access to a device or internet at school or a community site, consistent with social distancing guidelines.

Additionally, in developing plans for distance learning, LEAs may wish to consider what is realistic in the short-term (i.e., the first week or two of a school closure) and what may be possible should a longer-term closure become necessary. It is to be expected that LEAs' ability to deliver robust and meaningful educational opportunities will increase as they have more time to assess e-learning options, the degree of access to devices and internet among their students, and plan with their staff to develop content and operationalize effective instructional delivery channels.

Accordingly, in developing distance learning strategies to continue delivering educational services during a school site closure, LEAs should assess how all students will be able to access e-learning, looking at all of the following factors:

Whether a student has access to the internet,

Whether a student has access to a device and what alternatives exist for them to access a device,

How familiar a student is with the device and necessary support to ensure they are familiar with navigating its features, and

Additional support for teachers.

We are actively working with service providers and others in the private sector to develop partnerships to support students and LEAs during this crisis through offering free high speed internet access, devices, and other opportunities.

Key Considerations and Continuum of Options

As noted above, it is likely that the school's distance learning plan will contain a combination of all of the options and considerations below. Schools and districts should ensure that their plan addresses the needs of those students who have a device and access to the internet and those students who do not.

Decisions about the necessary programmatic adjustments to transition to distance learning should involve necessary consultation with local public health officials and labor partners, if applicable, about how we collectively work together to meet the needs of our community in the face of this unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.

In considering the development and implementation of a distance learning plan for schools, school administrators need to consider:

1. What are the existing resources (including hardware, licensing agreements with vendors, WiFi availability, etc.) that be can leveraged to more seamlessly transition to a distance learning environment?

2. What processes need to be developed to ensure that equitable access and opportunity is offered to students?

When considering those two key questions, school officials will then need to assess the continuum of available strategies. Most schools will need to offer multiple options and a combination of strategies to students, depending on accessibility to devices and the internet. These strategies will likely change, both in the short- and long-term. The plan should focus on how to deliver educational content to students across all platforms and delivery methods.
LEAs should also consider the means by which students access content. In many situations, students are using mobile devices, such as smartphones and application-based versions of a given platform software in place of web-based portals. While it is safe to assume mobile devices can access the internet through WiFi capabilities, many students rely on 4 and 5G data plans to go online.

Figure 1 below illustrates a continuum of delivery strategies, followed by key considerations for LEAs as they assess how to incorporate strategies on this continuum into a distance learning plan, based on their student population and community needs:

Figure 1: Continuum of Options

Long description of Figure 1: This is a continuum of options which contains five boxes representing delivery strategies. They are as follows: Teacher interaction and assistance through online learning platform to online curriculum for students to work from home to online curriculum in computer lab or classroom, consistent with social distancing guidelines to paper packets of instructional materials for students to work on at home to in person setting consistent with social distancing guidelines.

Students with 1:1 Access to Devices and to the Internet at Home

For students who have access to devices or schools that offer a 1:1 device program and the LEAs has a platform to provide an online learning environment, please consider the following strategies to support students and teachers in transitioning to digital learning:

Maintaining school district technology support to those programs and resource adjustments if not all schools have access to these programs;

Student/family access to technology assistance if troubleshooting is necessary;

Necessary modification and adjustment of the curriculum to ensure a quality instructional program design that includes a course structure, content presentation, virtual collaboration and interaction opportunities that are planned across the length of the school closure; and

Ensure that guidance is provided for how to effectively differentiate instruction and support for students in the class who need additional support, including, but not limited to, students with disabilities and English Learner students.

Example:

Westlake Charter School (WCS)

has crafted a digital space to offer daily academic and social-emotional lessons to its students. Families were surveyed about their technology needs so that the school was able to provide assistance to families that needed to access internet and a device. First, using Google Sites, the team built a simple website to house all teacher resources; the team crafted a distance learning manual which was posted to the site; feedback forms were crafted and FAQ pages were launched; and access was created to the delivery sites where teachers would eventually deliver content. Next the adminstrative team built a Distance Learning site for families to visit. Each grade level and subject area has its own page and each page is organized into days of the week.

The school has organized staff into collaborative groups that are meeting via video chat to curate daily lessons by grade level. Students will engage in at least one structured academic lesson and one social-emotional community building lesson each day, delivered digitally by their own classroom teacher. Further online learning resources are offered to extend learning beyond these structured lessons using a variety of online curriculum. Staff are building lessons that reflect Universal Designs for Learning (UDL), offering options such as UDL playlists to engage students in these distance learning opportunities. All lessons are being delivered through Google Classroom, incorporating videos of the teachers speaking and reading directly to students, as well as curating a wide variety of learning resources. The Google Classrooms are organized on Google Sites, shared with families, which structure daily learning for each grade level.

If students at your school(s) have 1:1 access to devices and you do not have a platform to provide an online learning environment, then please consider the following:

Utilizing a free online learning platform or free learning management systems that includes professional learning and/or easy guidance for teachers, some examples are Google classroom, Seesaw, etc. See the resources at the end of this page for more examples;

Constructing engagement with students that leverage basic features of the platform such as filling out shared documents, etc. to enable faster adaptivity to the new environment; and

Developing a lesson and course sequence that involves combinations of both independent and online learning engagements.

Example:

The Los Angeles Unified School District announced a partnership with its local PBS station to provide standards-based instructional content to students in math, history, and other subject areas. The programming will be accompanied by lesson plans and take-home assignments for students to complete. Los Angeles Unified teachers will have training utilizing PBS LearningMedia, a national resource that offers additional content to support educational assignments. PBS SoCal and KCET will provide educational resources via television broadcast, both on-air and online. The initiative entails three local public media channels broadcast content specifically targeted to kids Pre-K through the 12th grade. The partnership can support other partnerships between public media organizations and school districts, as PBS SoCal and KCET work together to deliver a satellite feed that other public media stations can use.

The same programming will also air in the San Francisco Bay Area through PBS member station KQED in San Francisco, which is leading the development of digital resources that align to state standards. This robust digital toolkit for educators and students includes: standards-aligned PBS video content, associated lesson plans and support materials, as well as online training sessions hosted by KQED for teachers. The PBS Learning Media materials will be offered in conjunction with the on-air content and will be available online. Content also streams on PBS SOCAL and KCET and on the free KCET app (available on Roku and Apple TV), the PBS Video app (available on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, the App Store and Google Play), as well as on YouTube. Districts might also consider partnering with their local cable access channel.

Considerations for Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities are particularly vulnerable, and continuing support from the state's educators is critical during these uncertain times. LEAs that physically close schools should focus their planning efforts on how to continue serving these students, by tailoring distance learning to provide educational benefits to students with disabilities, to the greatest extent practicable under the circumstances.

At this time, the federal government has not waived the federal requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Accordingly, IDEA's requirements, including federally mandated timelines, continue to apply. The United States Department of Education (US ED) Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) issued guidance (PDF) explaining how these obligations operate in the context of school closures in response to COVID-19.

The OSEP guidance recognizes that, given the unprecedented situation created by the threat of COVID-19, exceptional circumstances may affect how a particular service is provided under a student's individualized education program (IEP). While distance learning can provide educational benefit to many students with disabilities, it is important to consider the unique learning needs, accommodations and supports noted in each student's IEP.

CDE will convene a workgroup of practitioners and experts in special education to assess various models for effectively serving students with disabilities in a distance learning environment, including promising practices and specific strategies that LEAs are implementing in California and around the country. Additional guidance will be forthcoming shortly.

In the meantime, below are some considerations and suggestions for continuing to support students with disabilities as LEAs implement distance learning strategies.

Individualized Instruction in Distance Learning Settings.
As an LEA considers options for distance learning, the LEA should generally assess the extent to which its students with disabilities will be able to attain educational benefit under each option. Depending on a student's particular needs and the distance learning options available to the LEA, LEAs may also need to develop plans to provide additional services to some students with disabilities when onsite instruction and regular school operations resume.

Related Services.
To the greatest extent possible, LEAs should continue providing related services consistent with the student's IEP. This may involve providing services on one or more schoolsite, consistent with social distancing guidelines and accounting for the health needs of students and staff.

Assistive Technology.
LEAs should also be flexible in providing access to school-purchased assistive technology devices when necessary, consistent with law, to ensure children have access to devices they typically use at school.

Nonpublic Schools and Agencies (NPS/A).
Because NPS/A provide critical programs and related services to students with disabilities, CDE encourages continued payment to NPS/As. LEAs should work with NPS/As to take advantage of services that can be offered by NPS/As that elect to continue to provide services during school closures. In addition, LEAs and NPS/As should work collaboratively to ensure continuity of services for students currently served by NPS/As, pursuant to the IEP, including exploring options related to distance learning. In light of continued funding provided to LEAs under Executive Order N-26-20 to offer educational opportunities to all students during school closures, LEAs are encouraged to review master contracts with NPS/As and explore options for payment given the likelihood of student absences and the fiscal impact on NPS/As.

The resource guide offered in Appendix 1 includes links to on-line learning resources and strategies for students with disabilities. The Center on Online Learning and Students with Disabilities , from OSEP, provides guidance for parents and teachers, and Common Sense Media's Best Special Education Apps and Websites offers information on an array of tools. The guidance for on-line instruction from Riverside County Office of Education in Appendix 2 also includes suggestions for supporting students with disabilities.

Considerations for English Learners

In considering its distance learning plan, an LEA should also have a plan for providing language development instruction and services for English learners, aligned to the LEA's language acquisition program. While many English learners may benefit from accessing learning through alternative learning platforms, it is important to consider the unique learning needs and supports that are necessary for language development.

Accordingly, although distance learning may provide a valuable alternative during uncertain times of physical school closures, it is important to evaluate a student's progress toward language acquisition when the regular school session resumes to determine whether a student may need additional services and supports to account for how the distance learning program may have impacted the student's progress toward proficiency while onsite instruction was suspended.

Leveraging Transportation Resources to Support Distance Learning

School districts should consider ways to repurpose and redirect resources to support distance learning activities, especially those resources that may not be used to capacity while schools are closed. One example of this is student transportation and transportation staff. Several states and school districts have repurposed the use of buses for the transport of goods, materials and resources.

For example, South Carolina will equip 3,000 school buses with WiFi to serve as hotspots for students who lack internet access. An additional 6,000 school buses will be used to deliver instructional materials.

Student transportation operations - either run in-house by a school district or contracted by the school district - can be redeployed to help with:

Distribution of meals to students in most need,

Access to wireless equipment to make hot spots available to students unable to access a WiFi connection without leaving their home, and

Distribution of instructional packets to students that do not have or are unable to gain access to the internet.

Conclusion

These are uncertain times, and we know that planning is difficult given the constantly evolving situation. An LEA's distance learning plan will also need to continue to evolve, both in the short-term and long-term, i.e., in the first few weeks when the school site is closed or in the longer term if the closure extends into a longer period. While many students have access to devices and the internet at home, LEAs should consider whether an e-learning or distance learning strategy would be effective and then consider how to provide equitable access to those students without access, ensure equity, and provide for students with disabilities and English learners. The plan will need to be adjusted as local circumstances change, with the focus on ensuring and improving the opportunities provided to students.

Last Reviewed: Tuesday, December 6, 2022

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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Main Web Page Distance Learning Main Web Page This information was formerly titled Distance Learning published on March 17, 2020. On March 13, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-26-20 regarding the physical closure of schools by local educational agencies (LEAs) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Instructions for setting up a ConferZoom account

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Instructions for setting up a ConferZoom account

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Distance Education Teaching Online

ConferZoom Instructions

ConferZoom is a service that is free to administrators, staff and faculty of the California Community colleges system.

ConferZoom in Canvas

Confer Zoom (previously called ConferNow) is available to use in Canvas under the Course Navigation.
Before you can use it, you will need to sign up for an account.

Note: If you previously signed up for a free Zoom account with your COC email address, you will need to contact ConferZoom Tech support to request that your Zoom account be converted to ConferZoom.

Confer Tech Support
Tel: 1 (760) 744-1150 ext. 1537, 1554
Email - clientservices@cccconfer.org
Monday - Friday 8 am - 4 pm
After Hours Support (Zoom Help Center)

Sign into Confer Zoom
If this is your first time using ConferZoom, the following guides may be helpful to you:

Members - Host Guide: Learn how to create and log into your account, start instant meetings, schedule meetings, and invite participants.

Participants Guide: Learn what to expect once connected to a ConferZoom room as a participant.

ConferZoom Guides: Access additional guides and learn about ConferZoom features.

For more information on how to use ConferZoom in Canvas, please see Guide to using ConferZoom in Canvas

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ConferZoom is a service that is free to administrators, staff and faculty of the California Community colleges system. Confer Zoom (previously called ConferNow) is available to use in Canvas under the Course Navigation.Before you can use it, you will need to sign up for an account.

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Chancellor's Office -Student Resources

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The Chancellor's Office is committed to providing resources to support individual community colleges and their students that are now working in a whole new way - online only. Some common questions are answered below. Keep checking the site as it is updated daily.

The California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office is working closely with the governor's office, the California Department of Public Health and local colleges to mitigate effects of the COVID-19 outbreak. Nearly all California community colleges are working to transition educational services to online delivery, with many closing or suspending classes for days or weeks, including for scheduled and rescheduled spring breaks, to make the switch.

Visit the California Coronavirus (COVID-19) Response website to keep up with the latest COVID-19 news in California.

Students will continue to have access to financial aid resources, including those from student loans

For federal student financial aid (Pell Grants, Federal Supplemental Grants, Federal Workstudy and Federal Direct Loans) guidance will be issued by the U.S. Department of Education as it becomes available. Please see the Guidance for Interruptions of study related to Coronavirus (COVID-19) for information about Federal Work Study.

Community College Promise Grants: there is no impact to eligibility for the Promise Grants, and no penalty if a Promise Grant recipient is unable to complete all attempted coursework in a single semester. Promise Grant recipients must make satisfactory progress to retain the grants. Students should work with their local college campus to determine any actions needed to retain these grants.

California College Promise Program: Students that typically are not eligible for other types of financial aid may be eligible for a waiver of enrollment fees if they qualify as "first-year, first-time" students. As of today the law required students to maintain full-time status to retain eligibility from term to term. There is some flexibility on the number of units for students with disabilities.

Cal Grants: The California Student Aid Commission has not issued guidance to date on any changes to the Cal Grant eligibility requirements. We will post updates here as we receive them.

Student Success and Completion Grant: Students must be taking either 12 units or 14 units at the time of payment. If the student reduces the number of units after being paid for the term, there is no impact for that term, or for following terms.

Students that have not taken online courses previously should communicate with their instructors and college counselors to request additional support and resources. All campuses have put in place additional resources and personnel to support students transitioning to online instruction, including added support for students with learning disabilities. To learn more about preparing for online instruction visit the Student Resources page at our California Virtual Campus - Online Education Initiative website.

Students are encouraged to follow these four tips to be successful when learning online.

Log into your course ahead of time to review the learning objectives and any assignments. Assess the workload for the week and put the due dates on your calendar. Having a mental picture of what's ahead is the best thing you can do to prepare each week

Aim to have all of your assignments done prior to the due date. Why? Because life happens and when you wait until the last minute, you're more likely to have problems meeting the due date.

If you identify a challenge with meeting a due date, contact your instructor right away. Instructors are more willing to be flexible when contacted in advance of a due date.

Use the Canvas To-Do List and Calendar to track and stay current on your assignments. They are so helpful.

Students without a computer should check with their local institution about any laptop loaner programs that may be available. Students should also communicate with their individual instructors on how they may access course materials or live lessons through mobile phone options.

Several companies are providing reduced cost or free internet access to ensure students have access to reliable internet service.

Federal Work Study: The U.S. Department of Education has authorized payment of Work Study wages regardless of whether a student is actually working.
Please see the Guidance for Interruptions of study related to Coronavirus (COVID-19) for information about Federal Work Study.

EOPS and CalWORKs Work Study: State law does not currently allow payment of CalWORKs work study wages if students are not actually working in their work study job. The Chancellor's Office is currently reviewing regulations regarding EOPS work study and will update this question once that research is complete.

Yes. Colleges may refund student fees, including enrollment fees, if a student needs to withdraw due to an epidemic or other extraordinary conditions. Colleges should not record any withdrawal (W) or grade on the transcript of a student who withdraws under these circumstances. An excused withdrawal (EW) may be recorded; but in all cases, a withdrawal due to extraordinary conditions should not affect a student's academic progress, academic probation, or ability to repeat a course.

The enrollment process is fully automated at all California community colleges. You can start by visiting the CCCApply website. And, although the physical campus might be closed, colleges are prepared to offer all student services virtually. After you enroll the college will contact you with resources to get you to the next step. Colleges will offer on-line and telephone appointments with counselors to discuss you educational and career goals.

The Chancellor's Office is following Sacramento County guidance and advisories to protect public health and limit COVID-19 exposure for staff. You can continue to get assistance by calling 916-445-8752 or you can send an email to info@cccco.edu. Our regular hours of operation are 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. You can continue to submit comments and feedback through our digital contact form.

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The Chancellor's Office is committed to providing resources to support individual community colleges and their students that are now working in a whole new way - online only. Some common questions are answered below. Keep checking the site as it is updated daily.

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Zoom Video Breakout Rooms for Pair-Share, Small Group Discussions, and Peer Review

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Zoom Video Breakout Rooms for Pair-Share, Small Group Discussions, and Peer Review

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Online Student Services Platforms: CVC-OEI Ecosystem Portal

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Cranium Café: View the Student Experience: CVC-OEI Ecosystem Portal

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Recently, someone asked me what I perceived the role of an academic advisor to be. It has taken years of practice and refinement in order to come up with a relatively succinct answer to that question. We know we do a lot of important things for students, but when put on the spot, it can be difficult to articulate those things. I believe that the role of the academic advisor is to help engage students in thoughtful, proactive academic planning, decision making, goal setting, and problem resolution.

Anticipating students' needs is a critical component of effective academic advising. By providing answers to unasked questions and offering support and direction even when the student does not perceive a need, advisors can maximize their effectiveness and add value to the role of academic advisor.
1. Go Beyond the Catalog or Student Handbook
Much of our role as advisors is to point students in the direction of policies and procedures, all of which can be found in the student catalog or handbook.

How much will tuition be for this semester?

How many science prerequisites do I need to enter the nursing program?

If I fail this course, will I have to repeat it?

All of these questions have relatively simple answers. For example:

How much will tuition be for this semester? $4,500 plus fees.

How many science prerequisites do I need to enter the nursing program? 5.

If I fail this course, will I have to repeat it? Yes.

If advisors limit their answers to what can be found in a catalog or student handbook, they are no more valuable than the resource itself. They've reduced their value to that of an information center representative who simply points people in the right direction or hands out brochures. Advisors are invaluable in supporting students by anticipating their needs and addressing issues of which the student may not even be aware.

For instance, asking the question, "How much will tuition be for this semester?" may be an indicator that something has impacted the student's finances enough to result in asking the question. By doing some research on the student's record, the advisor may be able to discern the origin of the inquiry. Perhaps the student was notified that they are ineligible for financial aid due to failing Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP). Perhaps they owe a balance from previous semesters and are trying to plan how to pay it all off. Perhaps they need to know how many credits to register for based on limited finances. There are several ways to proactively anticipate the student's needs and provide comprehensive information.
2. Research Student Records
Research the student's record; advisors who have access to information within their student database are encouraged to use it in order to obtain insight as to the student's situation. Regularly review as many screens as you can access:

General comments

Financial aid and bursar comments

Holds

Balances

Financial aid status

Advisors who don't have access to any of those screens within their student database may be able to discern some information by other means. For instance, if you know that students who receive incompletes, withdrawals or failing grades may be at risk for losing financial aid, review the student's academic record and look for those types of grades. You can then ask the student if they've been notified that they're ineligible for financial aid. Check:

Current enrollment

History of drops, adds, withdrawals, stop-outs

Grades, course load history

By researching the student's record, you can better anticipate the source of the question and therefore more comprehensively address the student's needs. In this case, a more comprehensive answer might look like this:

"The cost of the 12 credits that you've registered for is $4,500 plus fees. You can find the chart that lists tuition and fees at www.college.edu/tuition. I see that you have a hold on your account. Have you developed a plan to pay off your balance? You may want to speak with someone in the bursar's office. You can contact them at (555)-123-4567. Once you pay your balance off, you'll be able to see your current charges by accessing the student portal: www.college.edu/studentportal/bill.

How are classes going? I see that you have a few incomplete grades from last semester. Is everything alright? Let's discuss what's happening and see if we can find ways to resolve any challenges you're facing, as well as develop a plan for completing those courses. As long as the grades are changed to passing by July, you'll be back in good standing for financial aid."

That level of personal interaction and insight transforms an advisor's ability to serve students.
3. Identify Issues and Potential Roadblocks
Let's look at another relatively "simple" question and how, by anticipating the student's needs, advisors can maximize their effectiveness in supporting the student.

"How many science prerequisites do I need to enter the nursing program?" This question could be a simple academic planning issue. However, it may not. The student may be proactively planning for a successful admission into the nursing program, or may be concerned about eligibility for admission. Draw on your experience as an advisor as a starting point. Do most students who aspire to enter the nursing program achieve their goals? Or is the program highly competitive in its selection process? Is there a minimum GPA under which the student will be excluded from being considered? Some steps to take to anticipate the student's needs are as follows:

Review the student's record. Have they attempted/passed/failed any of the prerequisites?

Consider the course sequences. Provide information about timing. Confirm that student expectations are aligned with course offerings (for example, if the student plans on taking a course in the spring but it is only offered in the fall).

Identify areas of possible concern. Investigate sources of support including tutoring, peer mentors, and study groups.

Discuss career choice. Is this a student who hates science but loves people? Are the science courses something that the student is able and willing to achieve?

4. Use Online Resources as a Supplement-Not a Replacement-to Advising
In the age of technology, advisors and students have become increasingly reliant on the multiple resources readily found online. Online resources, such as a website or student portal, are invaluable in making comprehensive information available for students. As a result, we are often ready to provide students with links to important websites, policies and forms. When referring students to online resources, remember to add value by anticipating students' needs.

Let's examine another "easy" question: "Where can I find out about commencement?" It's easy enough to provide the link to the registrar's page tht discusses commencement. Perhaps even adding a "congratulations" into the mix. However, ask yourself if that type of response adds value. Have you anticipated the student's needs? Some strategies for anticipating the student's needs and adding value are:

Check the student's record. Verify completion or enrollment in all coursework. Identify any problems with the record that might need to be corrected.

Look to see if the student has applied for the degree (if your institution separates out degree conferral from commencement). The student may have asked about commencement but is actually more concerned with degree conferral.

Provide information about commencement that may not be online. For instance, explain the review and/or invitation process and approximate timeline for future communications.

Anticipate what other questions the student may have as the end of the program approaches. Provide information about transcripts, degree conferral and receipt of diploma.

Summary
As you review these suggestions and consider implementation, you may think, "but I don't have time to do all that. I am swamped." I urge you to reconsider these thoughts. Examine what type of student traffic and inquiries that are keeping you so busy. Are the same students coming back repeatedly with different questions? Are many students asking the same questions at certain times of the year?

By proactively anticipating student needs up front, you may ultimately be able to fend off future inquiries and reduce the amount of student traffic you experience. An investment in time and attention to your students will pay off in terms of their overall success and your maximizing the valuable contribution you make as an advisor.

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Effective Academic Advising: Four Strategies to Anticipate and Address Student Needs

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Recently, someone asked me what I perceived the role of an academic advisor to be. It has taken years of practice and refinement in order to come up with a relatively succinct answer to that question. We know we do a lot of important things for students, but when put on the spot, it can [...]

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Jennifer Varney

Cindy is so excited! She has just been accepted in an online bachelor's degree program and cannot wait to get started. Her kids are in school; her employer is supportive of her educational efforts and has even offered tuition assistance of $3000 per year. Cindy knows the semester starts in a few weeks and is anxious to get registered, purchase her books, and start reading. She was working on a bachelor's degree ten years ago in a traditional college, but her family's financial situation forced her to drop out and take a full time job to help make ends meet. She is nervous about returning to school and has never taken an online course. Even her kids know more about computers then she does! Cindy believes that if she can just find someone to help her get herself registered, purchase the books, and learn some basics about online education, then she will be all set...

Online students are becoming an entirely new subpopulation of higher-education learners (Diaz, 2003, as cited in Hartman, 2008). These students primarily attend part-time, are largely interested in degree completion options, work full-time and self-report a low to moderate degree of technology abilities. Retention rates for distance education students are estimated to be 15%-20% lower than for face-to-face instruction. Low retention rates are attributed to a number of student factors including:

educational perparation, motivation and student academic self concept

situational factors e.g., family and employer support and changes in life circumstance

educational system factors e.g., quality and difficulty of instructional materials and academic support (Gibson, 1998, as quoted in Hartman, 2008)

What is Distance advising?
Distance advising is described as being able to offer a minimum set of core services relating to academic advising which assist distance learners in identifying and achieving their maximum educational potential. The institutional philosophy of a distance advising support services program must be to strive to respond to learner needs rather than the learner adjusting to an institution's established organizational structure (NACADA, 1999).

Challenges to advising at a distance

"Adults, perhaps more than any other student population need someone within the institution who cares" (Bland, 2003, p. 1). The primary challenge when advising from a distance is connecting with the student in such a way that he or she identifies the advisor as the person within the institution who cares. In face-to-face advising, this is accomplished through interpersonal communication; this level of care and connection is a more difficult to convey from a distance. Alternative strategies and tools need to be examined to help students feel connected to their institutions, promote student persistence and increase graduation rates (Luna & Medina, 2007).

Strategies for distance advising success
Kuh, Kinzie and Schuh and associates (2005) noted that "advising is viewed as a way to connect students to the campus and help them feel that someone is looking out for them" (p. 214)." Sizoo, Agrusa and Iskat (2005) observe that one of the features that adult learners find attractive in higher learning organizations is the ability to make connections with both other students and staff. One of the most important strategies for success in distance advising is to build relationships with students wherever they are. Bland (2003) observes that "every individual is unique, and the advisor's recognition of that student's personal attributes and life situations can strengthen the relationship" (p. 8). The goal of a distance advising program should be to replicate the intimacy of a face-to-face advisor-student relationship from a distance.

There are several strategies advisors may use to develop a strong relationship with students. One is to begin the relationship from the student's initial contact with the school. Advisors who are involved in the admissions process -- whether to discuss program specifics or potential careers post graduation -- make connections with students early in the student's academic career. Distance education adult students, in particular, are concerned with the quality of advising and other services and how closely these services replicate those offered on campus (Luna & Medina, 2007). An easy way to convey a sense of availability and concern for students at a distance is to end every email with an offer from the advisor to call the student if it is more convenient or would better convey the information (Luna & Medina, 2007). Another way to build meaningful connections with students early in their academic careers is to offer a comprehensive orientation that includes an explanation of systems, technology, planning sheets and anything else students need to know in order to be successful. Hartman (2008) suggests that a retention strategy for adult learners is to create online orientations for both students and faculty, as well as creating an online master schedule. Easily accessible, user friendly orientations let students access information whenever their schedules allow. Podcast video explanations of planning sheets and other potentially confusing tools may be uploaded to the student community system.

Another strategy distance advisors may use to build and solidify relationships with students is to develop and utilize some type of early warning system to identify students at risk. Hartman (2008) suggests that one strategy for retaining online students is to improve systems for tracking at risk online students. Early reach out to these students may both improve their academic performance and increase their persistence rates. Connecting with these students may also improve student engagement, particularly when the faculty member is involved in the conversations about student performance (Hartman, 2008), as well as help get the student back on track by providing a support network that adult students find attractive (Wasley, 2007, Sizoo, Agrusa & Iskat, 2005, Hartman, 2008). Online tutoring is also an effective tool to help distance students both alleviate concern they might feel before taking difficult courses like math or accounting, and improve their academic success. If tutoring is not available through the school, outsourced programs such as Smart thinking enable schools to offer valuable services to students.

A third strategy for effective distance advising is to be as proactive as possible with student questions and concerns. Try to anticipate student questions by keeping track of commonly asked questions and include information on these frequently asked topics or important information (such as graduation deadlines) in the signature section of the email. Investigate other methods for communicating with students. Use the phone whenever possible, but when that is not practical, consider communicating either via Skype or Facebook©.

Keep track of students and outreach to them at various checkpoints:

Have new students registered for the next term?

Do they know about a class coming up that they need to take before the rest of the course sequence is offered?

How are they handling the technological learning curve?

Would they benefit from the advisor logging into the class with them and helping them navigate the online course environment?

What about empowerment: how much latitude to advisors have in shepherding students through their education?

If a student begins a course and finds it is too difficult, is the advisor able to change the student's enrollment to another course?

How connected is the advisor to the department chairs, and how accessible are the chairs to students?

An advisor blog my prove beneficial in not only communicating deadlines but in improving student connections with the school. Students could describe to the blog through RSS feeds that would alert them every time the advisor posted something new. Advisors could include information about campus events, sports teams, or anything else that students from a distance many find interesting and help them connect with the situation. Students could be given the ability to publicly ask questions on the blog.

Conclusion

"Academic advising synthesizes and contextualizes students' educational experiences within the frameworks of their aspirations, abilities and lives to extend learning beyond campus boundaries and time frames" (NACADA, 2006). Advising from a distance is not that different from advising face-to-face. The most important strategy for success with online students is to form solid, meaningful connections from orientation to graduation and to use these connections to help students feel connected to something larger than just the computer, their online course, or the school's Web site.
Jennifer Varney
Assistant Director of Advising

Southern New Hampshire University Online

Campbell, S.M. (2008, March). Academic advising at the intersection. Presented at the NACADA region 1 conference, March 2008.

Kuh, G.D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J.H. and associates. (2005). Student Success in College: Creating conditions that matter. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass.

National Academic Advising Association. (1999). NACADA Standards for Advising Distance Learners. Retrieved January 7, 2009 , from theNACADA Clearinghouse of Academic Advising ResourcesWeb site: http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Clearinghouse/Research_Related/distance.htm

National Academic Advising Association. (2006). NACADA concept of academic advising. Retrieved January 7, 2009 , from http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Clearinghouse/AdvisingIssues/Concept-Advising.htm

Cite the above resource using APA style as:

Varney, J. (2009). Strategies for success in distance advising. Retrieved -insert today's date- from the NACADA Clearinghouse of Academic Advising Resources Web site.

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Jennifer Varney Cindy is so excited! She has just been accepted in an online bachelor's degree program and cannot wait to get started. Her kids are in school; her employer is supportive of her educational efforts and has even offered tuition assistance of $3000 per year.

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Accessibility Resources to Share from the LACCD

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Accessibility Resources to Share from the LACCD

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AudioTranscript  Instructions - ConferZoom

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AudioTranscript  Instructions - ConferZoom

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It appears that live closed captioning is not available through ConferZoom at this time. They are providing audio transcript instructions.

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Live caption services are available when there is a student participating in the live class, and needs hearing support.

Caption requests must be submitted a minimum of 5 business days in advance. Submit requests via email to support@ccctechconnect.org and must include:

1. Meeting Topic

2. Meeting Date

3. Meeting Start Time

4. Meeting End Time

5. Meeting ID

The 'Meeting ID' is identified in Canvas as the 'Session ID'.

1. EACH Event scheduled in Canvas has its own Session ID - even if you scheduled as a "recurring" meeting for the entire semester.

2. The 'Meeting ID' is identified in Canvas as 'Session ID'

3. Click on each meeting topic on the date the session is scheduled that you want to have live captions. (image 1)

4. Click on More Details.

5. A separate window opens, the Session ID. (image 2)

6. Do this for each individual Event scheduled in Canvas that you are requesting live captions.

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Live Closed Captions - How to Submit a Request

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Live caption services are available when there is a student participating in the live class, and needs hearing support. Caption requests must be submitted a minimum of 5 business days in advance. Submit requests via email to support@ccctechconnect.org and must include: Meeting Topic Meeting Date Meeting Start Time Meeting End Time Meeting ID The 'Meeting ID' is identified in Canvas as the 'Session ID'.

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Pandemic Pedagogy (Facebook Support Group)

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Pandemic Pedagogy (Facebook Support Group)

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Educators, students, and others share insights, best (and worst) practices, advice, successes, challenges, and research about converting to fully online instruction during the coronavirus (COVID-19)...

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With the sudden rush of coronavirus across the globe, and the urgent need to practice social distancing, universities and colleges across the United States and around the world are closing campuses and "pivoting" to online teaching and learning. The perils of this to education are both clear and unpredictable as administrators and instructional designers attempt to force a lifetime's worth of teaching experience into a new medium-one which requires new pedagogies, and one which cannot be tamed with simple best practices or matching assessments with outcomes.

For students, the disorientation will be profound. Where before they (may have) had skilled, imaginative, creative, even buoyant teachers leading their classes, now they will have a wisp of that person, a shade, a particulate version of that teacher guiding them through their learning. In worst cases, students working under teachers who have no training in classroom pedagogy, and who simply inherited their teaching techniques from the lecturers of old, will find that their instructors are overwhelmed by the demands of the digital, the expectations of nonetheless meeting at designated class times, and who have been in the past completely unwilling to entertain digital learning, much less distance learning.

Most of those who teach in higher education received no training to do their jobs in the classroom. And even fewer have been, or have sought out, training in digital pedagogy.

To succeed in this, students will need to be resourceful, and they may need to demand fairer treatment than they have ever demanded previously. What follows is something I hope will be a guide for students-that I hope will be shared with students-and which may help teachers better understand what's about to happen on the other side of the screen.

Before students move to the other side of the screen, though, they may face some very real challenges:

Many students are being asked to leave campus, move out of their dorms and go back home to complete their studies; but, according to the Hope Center's National #RealCollege Survey, out of 86,000 students surveyed, 56% were housing insecure in the previous year, and 17% were homeless. Asking these students to go 'home' isn't realistic, and could end up doing them real harm.

A similar survey by the Wisconsin Hope Lab in 2015 found that LGBTQ students who responded to the survey "faced higher risks of basic need insecurity compared to heterosexual students," some of which may be linked to lower levels of family support. In the case of some LGBTQ students, then, returning 'home' isn't an option.

It's especially important during times of crisis to remember that suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students. And academics are the most prevalent cause of stress and trauma for students. In a crisis, those who are already at risk become even more vulnerable.

As they are forced to leave campus, many students will lose student employment. This will likely mean they will have to find other employment in a hurry. That will interfere with class time, keeping up with assignments, and more.

If a student must return home, they may face little or no internet access there. In December 2019, EdSource reported that only 30% of households in rural California have internet access; even in urban areas, only 78% of households have service. In addition, a lot of local and campus libraries are also closing to avoid putting their employees at risk. That means access to public computers is going to become limited.

All of the above are compounded by the very real fear that the COVID-19 pandemic is causing. For all of us, we will be worried about our family and friends, our colleagues and coworkers, our own health and the health of those closest to us. There is no better response to anyone during this time than compassion, care, patience, and forgiveness. We are all going to make mistakes. We are all going to need help.

Pivot to Online: A Student Guide

If you have found yourself suddenly dealing with:

Abruptly online courses

The loss of student employment

A sudden move off campus

I hope the ideas below will help. Most of these involve being pretty direct with your instructors. I've put a little note at the bottom with some additional recommendations for how to make being direct work well.

1. Technology. Not everyone is going to have the same access to the same technology. Be proactive in reaching out to your teachers to let them know what tools you can use. Think about everything in your toolkit: email, text messages, phone calls, video conferencing/calling tools, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.

2. Internet access. Assess your internet access. If you have only a mobile phone, then insist that any technology used during this pivot to online be mobile-friendly. If you only have access to a computer for a few hours a day, at work, or at a library, don't hesitate to make that known to your instructors.

3. Class hours. A lot of colleges are insisting that students and teachers keep to their class schedules. This may not be realistic for you. Write to your instructor and let them know when you can meet, and why you may have trouble meeting during regular class hours.

4. Captioning. Insist the video lectures be captioned. Even if you don't need this, someone in your class may need captioned videos for accessibility.

5. Help each other. If possible, reach out to other students in your classes and create a support network. Use whatever digital means necessary to stay in touch. There are free tools, like Slack, that are good places to "gather" online; you can also create a Facebook group, a hashtag on Twitter or Instagram. Email works. Group text messages work. Find a way to stay in touch so that no one of you feels stranded or alone.

6. Seek help. There are resources that will remain available to you. Find out who the Dean of Students is at your school, locate a CARE team, or reach out to other student support services. Your school may have a food pantry, or emergency funding for students. If you don't know how to find your college's emergency aid fund, you can Google your college's name and "emergency aid fund" to find it. Your IT department might have laptops, mobile hotspots, tablets, or other equipment you can borrow during this crisis. There are people at your school who are not only trained to help you, but that is their job. So don't hesitate to ask for help when you need it. Also, take a look at this toolkit for coronavirus anxiety.

7. Be forgiving. And here's the thing: your instructors are just as anxious about all of this as you may be. They are nervous, they are unprepared, they are worried they will fail to teach you, worried that you will not meet the course requirements now, that they will not be able to figure out how to administer exams, grade homework, and more. Very few college or university instructors received any training in teaching. And even fewer have been trained, or sought training in, digital teaching. Be patient with them even as you ask them to be patient with you.

8. Refer faculty to The Hope Center. This tireless group has created a resource guide for teachers during the COVID-19 crisis.

This is a time to work together. In all of the above suggestions where I've recommended that you reach out to teachers, that you insist on certain kinds of accommodations, the key is to be kind. Take me at my word here. I've worked directly and indirectly with faculty on six continents, and most of them will respond to kindness. If they know you are trying your best, they will also try their best. (Some of them are reading this right now, too.) Remember that faculty are human beings who have been caught just as much by surprise by this pivot to online as you have... only many of them are not as tech- or web-savvy as you are.

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With the sudden rush of coronavirus across the globe, and the urgent need to practice social distancing, universities and colleges across the United States and around the world are closing campuses and "pivoting" to online teaching and learning.

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for low-income households. Apply below.

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Participate in assistance programs like the National School Lunch Program, housing assistance, Medicaid, SNAP, and others, or are enrolled or enrolling in the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) with Xfinity.

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Internet Essentials - Affordable Internet from Xfinity

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See if you qualify for low-cost, fast and reliable Xfinity Internet from Comcast now! low-income households benefit from access to online resources

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U.S. providers offer free wifi for 60 days

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Most notable is Comcast's free public wifi for all for 60 days, effective Saturday.

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Comprehensive Google doc that includes practical advice and resources for online teaching in the wake of Coronavirus that's been populated by instructors across the country!

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Strategies for Class Online During an Emergency - University of Illinois Board of Trustees

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Strategies for Class Online During an Emergency - University of Illinois Board of Trustees

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One of the biggest challenges of teaching during a building or campus closure is sustaining the lab and performance components of classes. Since many labs require specific equipment, they are hard to reproduce outside of that physical space.

Considerations as you plan to address lab activities:

Take part of the lab online: Many lab activities require students to become familiar with certain procedures, and only physical practice of those processes will do. In such cases, consider if there are other parts of the lab experience you could take online (for example, video demonstrations of techniques, online simulations, analysis of data, other pre- or post-lab work), and save the physical practice parts of the labs until access is restored. The semester might get disjointed by splitting up lab experiences, but it might get you through a short campus closure.

Investigate virtual labs: Online resources and virtual tools might help replicate the experience of some labs (for example, virtual dissection, night sky apps, video demonstrations of labs, simulations). Those vary widely by discipline, but check with your textbook publisher, or sites such asMerlot for materials that might help replace parts of your lab during an emergency.

Provide raw data for analysis: In cases where the lab includes both collection of data and its analysis, consider showing how the data can be collected, and then provide some raw sets of data for students to analyze. This approach is not as comprehensive as having students collect and analyze their own data, but it might keep them engaged with parts of the lab experience during the closure.

Explore alternate software access: Some labs require access to specialized software that students cannot install on their own computers. Depending on the nature of the closure (for example, a building versus the entire campus), Technical Services may be able to help set up virtual machines to host needed software for students.

Increase interaction in other ways: Sometimes labs are more about having time for direct student interaction, so consider other ways to replicate that level of contact if it is only your lab that is out of commission.

Foster communication and collaboration among students

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One of the biggest challenges of teaching during a building or campus closure is sustaining the lab and performance components of classes. Since many labs require specific equipment, they are hard to reproduce outside of that physical space.

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(Pierce College)

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Synchronous vs. Asynchronous: Transitioning to Teaching Online Spring 2015

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There are two modes of interaction and communication in online learning, or two modes of delivering eLearning: synchronous and asynchronous. Which is better? The short answer is “It depends.”

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Best Messaging Apps for College Students

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Best Messaging Apps for College Students

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Messaging apps are useful in almost any situation. It is great for the everyday user, or business user. Whatever you use messaging apps for, it helps connect many of us with each other all over the world!

1. Apple iMessage

iMessage is the only service for iPhone, iPad, and Mac owners to talk across their apple products. iMessage is known as the benchmark of messaging services because of its ease and usefulness. It is one of those features Apple users can't live without because it's so easy.

Ironically, the biggest pro to this messaging app is also it's biggest con. By being tied into the apple ecosystem exclusively, Android users and others are left out on the fun. This can be quite frustrating when you see other people with using a service that you can never be a part of if you are not an Apple user. This communication between Apple's is understood to not transition very well into the Android or Samsung environment because of the differences between the two.

2. Facebook Messenger

Facebook has graced us with an app that lets people from all around the world talk to one another without hassle. Throughout the years, this app has changed for the better, making it easier to talk and respond to each other. Not only is there the option for communication, but for playing games with your friends as well!

It is a great app for those who don't have a phone provider because you have the ability to call as well as text making it useful in situations where WiFi is available. This is one of those great messaging apps that allow you to communicate with almost everyone around you!

3. GroupMe

GroupMe is a great platform for team sports and huge class wide chats. Often when a coach needs to get in touch with their whole team they use groupme to send out blast messages so everyone can get in contact with each other and know the schedule. Alternatively, it's also used for class-wide announcements and bonding. This service is great for those who don't want to give out their phone number but need to talk to someone in their class. It is very easy to use and offers the opportunity to communicate to others within the app.

4. Google Hangouts

Hangouts is a messaging app by google. This app uses your gmail account to talk to others if you have their gmail account. This is great if you need to get in contact with somebody and have no way of texting them. You can also do video calls in hangouts which makes it a great collaboration tool when you need to meet face to face. Overall, this app is great for making quick messages about a project and can be very useful when you are in an area where there is internet and no service.

5. Slack

Slack is a great tool for college students with an internship or group projects. You can set up rooms and invite people to the server. This platform is designed for business professionals in mind. So for college students who are getting ready for the workforce it is a great tool to have and know how to use. Slack uses the internet to send messages instantaneously allowing for great collaboration in school and work. Although this is mostly used for group chats, you can also direct message people out of the group for private chats.

6. Discord

This is a new messaging app built by gamer's in mind, but is widely expanding. Discord has voice channels, texting, and video calls. Making it a all-in-one solution for people to communicate, no matter where they are and in any way they desire. Discord is the new future, which makes it a great tool for students who are looking to hang out with friends or get some work done.

See Also

7. Snapchat

Snapchat changed the messaging game. By introducing this idea of using pictures to send a message was a mind blowing breakthrough that got people hooked. Snapchat using a combinations of filters and different types of stickers to jazz up your photos on the fly. This makes it fun and exciting to use the platform in a way that most people wouldn't have thought. This is one of the biggest growing messaging apps on the market. Since it's birth, recently they have added news sources and games to the platform to really get people involved with one another.

8. RCS

Rich Communication System (RCS) is the future open standard for messaging apps. It is set to replace traditional methods such as iMessage and regular texts (sms). RCS will allow people to have to have to worry about what they are using to text with because everyone will be using the same! It will work cross platforms between androids, ios, and many more. By using an open standard for implementation any developer or carrier has the option to support it. It is like iMessage for all by allowing send and read receipts, WiFi/data to text instantly, and ability to send high resolution photos and videos. Currently, RCS is only on android, but in the future, we should see it expand rapidly very soon.

9. Skype

This is one of the classic messaging apps today which allows for calling and texting for both personal and business. Although Skype has really aged, it is a great messaging app for college students. Knowing how to use Skype is key to getting a job in the real world. Without Skype starting the video chat revolution, we wouldn't have many of the messaging apps we use today. They all have some variation of what Skype created in face to face communication. This allows for us to understand the standard in face-to-face communication over video chatting!

10. Whatsapp

Whatsapp is the largest messaging platform worldwide with 1.5 billion users throughout 180 countries. It provides worldwide access to communication allowing students from all over the globe to collaborate and build relationships. This is one of the biggest messaging apps out there allowing more people to access each other and learn more because of it!

Do you use any of these messaging apps? What one do you use the most? Tell us in the comments below!

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/10-ways-texting-affected-ability-communicate

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Brooke Barup

Brooke is a senior at Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts, and is majoring in Creative Writing with a minor in Education. She is from Waterbury, Vermont, and loves her puppies and kittens which are currently at home waiting for her. Brooke is a dedicated student and spends most of her time working and study.

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Best Messaging Apps For College Students - Society19

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Messaging apps are useful in almost any situation. It is great for the everyday user, or business user. Whatever you use messaging apps for, it helps connect many of us with each other all over the world! iMessage is the only service for iPhone, iPad, and Mac owners to talk across their apple products.

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ASCCC Effective Practices for Online Tutoring

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ASCCC Effective Practices for Online Tutoring

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Framework for good online instruction

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Don't have enough resources to support your students? Looking to expand the hours of support available to your students? Get access for your students to writing resources when they need them. eTutoring offers a number of benefits to your Writing Center, including:

Easy online access

Options for asynchronous and synchronous writing tutoring

Central Repository of all writing submissions and tutor responses

Ability to search for and view work by student/by tutor

Ability to create and post tutor schedules, viewed from student and tutor homepages

Reporting functions w/details of student usage, response turnaround time, ongoing and across the semester

Access to a dynamic Resource Library

What People Are Saying About eTutoring

Faculty at my college are always impressed with the consistency and quality of the feedback their students receive from eTutoring. Whether students are writing at the ESL, developmental, or college-level, they get the type of advice that will allow them both to revise their work and to grow as writers. Some faculty simply make students aware of the service, some formally introduce it into their classes, while others require students to submit all their writing to a tutor first. Whatever strategy they use, faculty appreciate eTutoring as an integral part of the teaching and learning process.

Quote from Jim Gentile, Professor at Manchester Community College, and Chairman of the Center for Teaching of the Connecticut Community College System

What options are available to me?

eTutoring offers two models: collaborative and individual. Within the collaborative model, participating institutions share resources to provide greater coverage and quicker turn-around time. eTutoring monitors the quality of the writing tutor feedback. Within the individual model, an institution is free to use the software platform with their own tutors.

Click here to read what others are saying about eTutoring!

What technology will my students need?

eTutoring is built to be cross platform and cross browser compatible. The only plug-in students will need to have installed on their computers is Adobe Flash for the live tutoring sessions.

How do I learn more?

Our staff is more than happy to demonstrate the platform to you and to answer any questions.

Click here to contact our staff

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Don't have enough resources to support your students? Looking to expand the hours of support available to your students? Get access for your students to writing resources when they need them.

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Using Messaging Apps for Classroom Communication & Retention

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Using Messaging Apps for Classroom Communication & Retention

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Ways to Incorporate an Online Learning Assistant into your course

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Ways to Incorporate an Online Learning Assistant into your course

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Crowdsourcing Teaching Online with Care 