1 Planning Your Online Course

This list provides a broad overview of considerations for remote teaching. It also incorporates principles and guidelines that emerged from the Science Planning for Fall Committee in May 2020, which had representatives from all Science departments as well as students. These are recommendations that the committee believes will be beneficial in helping departments and instructors decide how to deliver quality education in the current circumstances. It is up to departments to determine how to apply these principles and guidelines in specific courses and across their offerings.

1. Identify your Course Context and define your Learning Goals

Know your students, their needs, expectations, their characteristics (prior knowledge, expectations, work-life balance issues, health issues, and equity, diversity and inclusion concerns). Consider the size and year level of your course, the duration and frequency of class meetings, and your experience and philosophy of teaching when deciding the delivery mode of your course.

Determine what learning goals are most important for students to learn in your course and how you will assess them. Teaching online can take more time than face-to-face settings (due to technological and communication issues), and as such, it is suggested that instructors reduce their course content and avoid including too much external, non-assessed material.

2. Think about Alignment

It is important to align the learning objectives with instructional strategies (your teaching methods), learning activities and assessment strategies. You may want to refer to a course design template (Google Doc) that can help you structure your course and record this alignment.

3. Find the right balance between synchronous and asynchronous teaching

Plan the delivery mode(s) for your course, which will most likely have synchronous and asynchronous components to allow you to meet with students in real-time remotely (synchronously) and asynchronously to achieve your learning objectives. Ensure bridging between synchronous and asynchronous components carefully to make it a whole course, and consider how any TAs in the course could best assist (and how they will trained to do so) [See: Lecturing Platforms for live sessions and their recordings, and Interactions Outside of Synchronous Lectures as well; and regarding TAs: TA Roles and Responsibilities].

4. Select Learning Technology

It is important to carefully select the learning technology that will allow students to achieve the learning objectives and apply their learning. Each technology is designed with a particular pedagogical intent and will come with strengths and limitations. Before you decide, feel free to check with us to see if the technology is supported at UBC and is right for your purpose.

5. Develop an Assessment Plan that Fits your Course

The design of – and communication about – assessments can make a large difference in student engagement, maintaining academic integrity, and keeping your workload manageable [See: Assessments Grades for design ideas and tools, and a sample Course Assessment page for how you might show this in Canvas].

6. Develop Course Materials and Learning Activities

  • Implement inclusive teaching practices that support students and their wellbeing [See: Accessibility, Inclusive Teaching, and Student Support Wellbeing for guidance and resources].
  • Provide frequent feedback to your students on their learning.
  • Offer opportunities for your students to give you feedback as well – a midterm survey can be a valuable opportunity for such feedback [See: CTLT’s Online Teaching Program’s Mid-course feedback: what it is and why is it important? and feel free to ask anyone on Skylight team for support with this].
  • Implement active learning strategies online [See: In-class Activities and Active Learning Approaches which we will continue to update, as well as check on Piazza (link is in left-side navigation) – this is an area of substantial interest where we need to test and share as recommendations with our current tools are still being developed].
  • Provide the course’s structure and expectations for students in their own work as well as their interactions with you and other students [See: Setting Expectations and Syllabus Development].
  • Copyright issues are similar for online courses, though if you are sharing more things digitally with your students you may want to review some of the rules and support; if you want to provide substantial copyrighted material like a book, you will want to connect with the Library Online Course Reserves team [See: CTLT’s Online Teaching Program, Copyright considerations for online courses].
  • Connect with any Skylight team member if you have any questions about these practices.

7. Strategies to engage students

Considering a variety of ways to engage your students is particularly important when you are teaching remotely [See: Building Community for general recommendations/ideas around instructor presence in the course (connecting students with you and with each other), Interactions Outside of Synchronous Lectures for tools and approaches, and Lecturing Platforms for information on options for live sessions and recordings].

8. Establish a clear communication strategy

  • Establish expectations around responsiveness to student questions from email or the class discussion board, aiming to be timely (i.e., they don’t wait too long) but also setting boundaries (i.e., doesn’t overwhelm your time), perhaps making public responses in a discussion board to more common questions to save time.
  • Also establish regular updates (e.g., here’s what’s going on in the course at the moment, key upcoming deadlines) to provide a rhythm and structure to weeks in the course, but don’t overdo it; for a 13-week course this might be once or twice a week, in a 6-week course this might be every day or two – students will be lost if there are too many (e.g., multiple announcements a day) or too few announcements. (If you do have an urgent message outside of regular announcements it will also be more noticeable.)

[See: Interactions Outside of Synchronous Lectures for tools and approaches.]  It is helpful to announce these communication plans at the start of the course [See: Setting Expectations and Syllabus Development].

9. Consider Student Workload and Well-being

The time needed to complete the readings, learning activities and assessments, perhaps reducing content compared to your face-to-face class in anticipation of technological issues/limitations [A set of recommendations/considerations is in this 3-page document from U Toronto, and to read further they have references here].

Consult the Mid-Course Feedback Survey that you can reuse or adapt to your course needs (add document here).

10. Consider Teaching Team Workload and Well-being

The time needed to develop and/or choose your course materials, to design student learning activities and assessments, to upload your materials to Canvas site, to mark exams/assignments, to offer office hours and other online engagements/teaching team meetings related to your course, etc. Identify the type of support (technical, professional development, etc.) that may be available to you, and what your TA(s) will be able to cover in the course [See: resource on “Managing Workload” from the CTLT Online Teaching Program, and TA Training and Responsibilities for more on Teaching Assistants].

11. Have a Back-up Plan

Have a back-up plan for various course elements, especially anything that will happen “live” (lecture, test, etc.). For example, if teaching synchronously, consider recording your sessions/lectures in case of technical problems or in anticipation of not everyone may make the class on time.  The Science Planning for Fall Committee recommends: “Record relevant synchronous class sessions for students to access later. This may include tutorials and discussions, depending on the course. The key is to record sessions that have real value to students when viewed later.”

12. Save Time in Course Design and Organization

Choose a course design template: Simplicity and consistency are important, especially in remote teaching settings. Choose a course template that is complementary to your chosen course delivery mode and stick with it. There are templates available if you would like to use one of them or develop your own [the Examples in Canvas module has a variety of options/ideas]. Introducing students to the structure they can expect for the term is also useful. If you have used Canvas before, do some house cleaning before you start: Complete a quick inventory of your course material to determine what is still needed, and what needs to be updated, removed or replaced. If you are new to using Canvas or remote teaching: you may want to consider what needs to be converted online (e.g., lecture notes), and what it will take to do so [See: sample Get Started page].

Connect with your departmental Science Education Specialist (SES) if you have one or reach out to central Skylight for a consultation on pedagogy, assessment, course evaluation, inclusive teaching practices, etc. (https://skylight.science.ubc.ca/contact). Further detail is provided on the pages which follow (they linked above in associated topics, so you can access them that way or see the list by clicking the Modules page using the left/top navigation bar).

Resources

Further useful links to sites outside of this Canvas shell (we also link to these in specific sections where they come up):

For any questions or for feedback on your ideas, please feel free to post on our Piazza or to reach out to any Skylight team member. We’re here to help!

License

Skylight Guide to Teaching Online Copyright © by The Skylight Team. All Rights Reserved.

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