4 Announcements
Announcements
- Congratulations on Completing the Transitioning to Teaching Online
- Transitioning to Online Teaching Program Survey
- Reminder Synchronous Session 2
- Welcome to Day 5, our final day of Transitioning to Online Teaching
- Welcome to Day 4! Reflection and Application
- Synchronous Session 1 Follow-up announcement
- Corrected Zoom Link
- Welcome to Day 3: Teaching Presence
- Welcome to Day 2: Planning for Online Blended Learning
- Welcome to Day 1: Approaching Online Teaching and Learning
- Welcome
Congratulations on Completing the Transitioning to Teaching Online
Congratulations on completing the Transitioning to Teaching Online Program. In this final announcement, we will share some resources discussed in the course and share possible next steps for you in the course development. It was a really inspiring week. It was exciting to see how much all of you are thinking about good practices in online teaching and how much concern you have for developing positive learning environments for you and your students. Another theme that emerged during the course was how challenging this transition is for many of you for different reasons including time zone differences, required support, and how different elements of your in-person classes don’t always translate well to the online environment.
Resources
We wanted to share some of the resources that we discussed during the last session:
Guiding Principles
High-level Guiding Principles for Designing and Teaching courses online PDF Version, Word Version. Throughout late April and May, more than 100 colleagues from across UBC Vancouver were invited by the Office of the Provost & Vice-President Academic to think through some of the widespread, pressing issues in course design and delivery, in order to surface best practice advice. As student success is at the center of this work, student leadership across campus; including the Alma Mater Society, Graduate Student Society, Senate leadership, and undergraduate student societies— were also engaged.
Online Teaching Program
The Online Teaching Program (OTP) As we mentioned during the session, the ToT program is only one component of the larger online teaching program. You may want to go through the modules for the Online Teaching Program, as these provide a more detailed discussion of the steps about how to design and deliver an online course. There are also workshops to take and you can set up consultations.
ASCU Online Learning Toolkit
On the last day and during the course we discussed some ideas around module sequencing as a way to plan out your course. The section Organizing Your Course. Includes some useful tools and resources about sequencing you may want to take a look at.
Other Resources Mentioned During the Course
The Guide to Fostering Asynchronous Online Discussion in Higher Education Thorough resource on how to facilitate asynchronous discussion
It Turns Out You Can Build Community in a Zoom Classroom: This is a great article that Vincent shared in the course about how to build community in a synchronous environment,
Workshop Evaluation
If you haven’t done so yet, please take a few minutes to create the 3 question course survey
Sincerely
Charlyn, Kari, Manuel, and Lucas
Transitioning to Online Teaching Program Survey
Hi everyone
It was really incredible to get to know you and learn with all of you for the past week. We will send a follow-up email and announcement early next week to share the session slides and resources we talked about today. Please do not hesitate to contact us as you continue your work in developing your online courses for the fall term.
We are always looking for ways of improving this course so that it is as valuable for faculty and instructions. Please take a few minutes when you have a chance and complete the 3 question course survey.
Sincerly,
Charlyn, Kari, Manuel and Lucas
Reminder Synchronous Session 2
Hi everyone
Just a final reminder that the final synchronous session for the course will be taking place from 1:00 – 2:30 pm today in the Collaborate Ultra Room
https://ca.bbcollab.com/guest/9a5268ecc63e40899dd5ee3194239a3d
Welcome to Day 5, our final day of Transitioning to Online Teaching
In this announcement, we will look back at Day 4 and look ahead to this afternoon’s synchronous session, which will run from 1:00-2:30 pm Collaborate Session Link. If you have any difficulty getting into the room, please email lucas.wright@ubc.ca. If you have slides, examples, syllabus, or videos you want to share with your small group, you will be able to use the Collaborate screen share function.
Our synchronous session this afternoon will signal the end of this condensed program, but we hope that it represents the beginning (or better yet, continuation) of your learning and has given you enhanced confidence in your ability to teach online in engaging and effective ways. We also hope that you carry forward the resources and templates we’ve offered in any ways that are helpful to you.
Recapping Day 4
On Day 4 we focused on reflection (of key ideas, strategies, and individual tasks) and the application of these strategies to one aspect of your course. Our intention for Day 4 was to hold space and time for you to begin applying some of the knowledge from this course to your own work. We offered you 2 options: The first was a structured activity aimed at helping you redesign your syllabus with blended learning in mind; the second was a more open-ended option aimed at reflecting on one key component of blended online learning and building it out. Whether you chose to work on your syllabus, write a “to do list” for your course, film an introduction video, or build out your Canvas course site, we hope that you were able to begin applying what you’ve learned this week.
Learning Lounge Recap
As a way to build our own “teaching presence” (and to model this strategy), we set up a “Learning Lounge” (credit to Neil Armitage in Sociology for this idea) which we envisioned as a casual drop-in space where you can visit with us and discuss anything that is on your mind regarding blended online teaching and learning. We were pleased to see a few of you were able to attend. We ended up discussing approaches to videos, recording synchronous sessions, and module sequencing. We wanted to share a resource from the Association of College and Universities educators about creating a module map as a way to create sequencing for your course.
Setting up a Learning Lounge in your course: We have found that the Learning Lounge is an effective way to initiate casual conversation and to have synchronous small group conversations about topics that people are keen to discuss. If you choose to set up a learning lounge in your own course, we recommend that you create an ongoing Collaborate Session titled “Learning Lounge” and explain to students how to use it at the beginning of the course. It can be particularly useful for students to connect if they are in similar time zones (e.g. if there is a group of students in China, or on Canada’s East Coast, they may wish to meet in the Learning Lounge at times that work for them). Make sure you specify that the guest link enables participants to be Moderators (aka share content, screens, etc.).
Looking Ahead to Day 5
For Day 5, we will be meeting in a final synchronous session for 90 minutes. Here is an overview of how we will spend that time:
1:00-1:10: Introduction and setting up the session
1:10-2:00: Breakout groups for small group presentations (You will each have five minutes to present what you’ve worked on this week, and another five minutes to engage with feedback from peers)
2:00-2:30: Large group shareback and closing thoughts Following our synchronous session today, we will send a final announcement email with a few thoughts, a survey, and some more resources as you move forward. Thank you for your ongoing engagement with this course, and for the expertise, you are sharing with us and with each other.
Looking forward to this afternoon.
Sincerely, Lucas, Manuel, Charlyn, and Kari
Welcome to Day 4! Reflection and Application
Good morning and welcome to Day 4 of Transitioning to Teaching Online.
Cogitating and putting it all together.
Recapping Day 3
The discussions shared for day 3 of the program showed that some of you have shifted your thinking about online teaching and identified some new approaches that you are willing to, interested in, or gathering courage (!!) to apply to your teaching.
- Reflections on teaching presence spurred some surprise: teaching presence DOES NOT EQUAL teacher presence, but is reflected in many aspects of your course.
- Most have moved away from relying on synchronous sessions to offer lectures as you would in face to face settings.
- Ideas for synchronous sessions included: check-ins and polls, taking pauses, building in time for interaction, more conscientious use of the feedback tools (polls, emojis, etc.) available in Collaborate/Zoom. Irene brought forward a suggestion to “begin each lecture with a blank slide (or a line drawing) that students are encouraged to use the annotate functions in Zoom or CU to turn into a graffiti wall – this can be how they’re feeling, colouring in, or just doodles or random thoughts. I like it because it has the dual function of relaxing the students, inviting them into a participatory mode, and giving them some good practice with using the annotate functions before in-class participation exercises like brainstorming.”
- The idea of teaching presence in asynchronous components of your course represented a new idea for many and spurred lots of consideration: “the idea of using video (or audio) recordings to convey information that might normally be in a short and gruff email – things like the welcome video that can demonstrate how to interact with the course Canvas page, or a weekly update” (Benjamin). “creating a pre-recorded video to introduce myself, walk the students through the course website and show them how the course is organized online. Set clear written expectations and guidelines. I plan to communicate with students via weekly announcements recapping what should have been accomplished, highlighting key concepts and preparing them for the following week (Irene).
- Many of you have identified new skills you will need to learn, such as getting comfortable with posting videos. A challenge with this is how much time video can take upfront. However, once you practice a bit it is not too bad. To post high-quality videos, you may want to invest in some additional equipment – a good microphone because sound makes a huge difference with videos and is hard to edit if it doesn’t go well. And a tripod for your mobile phone, especially if you have a mic, can be great for short videos. We have set up a discussion topic to share resources about developing videos for your course. Please take a look and add any other resources that you know of.
Today Day 4
Today is a day to step back and review your learning, consider ideas that have arisen in the discussions, and think about how you might apply them to your own course – a chance to put it all together for reflection and application. For Day 4’s activity, here are two options to choose from: an opportunity to rethink your syllabus, or work on any component that you think will help you move forward with your course. You will have an opportunity to drop into the Learning Lounge to get advice about any issue you may wish to pursue.
Looking Ahead to Day 5
As we approach the end of this five-day program and given the work you will be doing on today’s activity, you should be prepared to share your work from this week with a small group of peers tomorrow (You will have 10-15 minutes each to share your work in small groups and get feedback).
Looking forward to hearing about your journey, Lucas, Manuel, Charlyn, and Kari
Synchronous Session 1 Follow-up announcement
It was great to finally get to see all of your faces. We feel like we have already gotten to know many of you through the discussion board but sometimes it can feel so different connecting synchronously. We wanted to follow up on our first synchronous session with the materials we shared and developed, and answer some of the questions that you brought up.
Session Materials
Session Slides
Session Whiteboards
Activity 1: Asynchronous and Synchronous
Activity 2: Teaching presence Note: Thanks to Matthias for sending me a complete screenshot of the whiteboard, as my version was cropped incorrectly.
Breakout Rooms
Today we realized that we had not shared the instructions with you in the breakout rooms, so we wanted to go over a couple of related best practices for breakout rooms.
- Be really clear with your students about the instructions and expectations for participation in the breakout rooms. You can do this by sharing a slide with the students as a link before they go into breakout rooms. You can also share an instruction document as a file or a link in the chat.
- While not always possible, if you can, join students in different breakout rooms. Students often express that they really value those connection points with faculty and instructors.
- Set up a way for students to share back what they covered in the breakout rooms. One way to do this is by having students work together to complete an assignment or collaborate on developing a document.
Chat Questions
Does zoom work in china? Other countries (e.g. Iran)
For regulatory reasons, Zoom does not work in Cuba, Iran, North Korea Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine (Crimea Region). Any company that is US-based such as Canvas typically has these legal restrictions to access
From our understanding Zoom does work in China. However, students in China cannot create Zoom sessions and some students may have access issues. This is often bandwidth related. There are a number of tools that do not work in China including the UBC supported tool Proctorio and some of the following web-based, non-FIPPA compliant tools: Google Mail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Dropbox, Flickr images, YouTube, Vimeo videos, Facebook Suite (includes Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger), Twitter, Medium (social media publishing), Tumblr, Snapchat, Pinterest, Slack, Wikipedia, Soundcloud, Github.
How to get access to Canvas templates?
There are various Canvas template available on campus, We recommend checking the Arts Remote Teaching Template
How do you add the “mark as done” in Canvas?
The Mark as done feature on Canvas is a requirement that students need to complete to be able to move on to the next module. More details can be found on the Canvas documentation page.
Will UBC Provide Padlet Access?
Not at the moment. Padlet is hosted on US servers and as such, does not meet the FIPPA requirements to be supported at UBC.
Could someone comment about the restrictions (with respect to being FIPPA compliant) of using Google Docs for group work?
There are clear guidelines about the protection of privacy information known as FIPPA regulations, more details can be found here: https://universitycounsel.ubc.ca/subject-areas/access-and-privacy-general/useful-resources/ The main thing to be aware of is to protect the privacy of student information, this is why UBC only supports tools that are hosted in Canada or meet the FIPPA requirements.
Will participants notice the facilitator jump into the breakout room?
Yes, the facilitator’s name will appear on the list of breakout room participants. It is good practice to let students know that you will be joining the breakout rooms.
High-Level Principles for Teaching Online In the Fall
At the end of the session, Lucas mentioned that he had just received a set ofFile Developing-guiding-principles-for-fall-instruction-3.2-1.pdf could not be included in the ePub document. Please see separate zip file for access. to guide online teaching in the fall, developed by the Provost office and multiple committees of faculty staff and students. These will be released soon on the Keep Teaching Website.
However, we wanted to share them with you. As mentioned by Kari, she was able to ensure this course is aligned with them. In future iterations, we expect to include specific content from these guidelines.
See you online
Charlyn, Manuel, Kari, and Lucas
Corrected Zoom Link
Hi all I am sharing a corrected Zoom link in-case you had issues accessing the session.
https://ubc.zoom.us/j/99037600004
Welcome to Day 3: Teaching Presence
Welcome to Day 3!
Welcome to Day 3 of Transitioning to Teaching Online. In this announcement, we will recap and summarize yesterday’s discussion activity and introduce Day 3, which focuses on helping you define your teaching presence online.
Recapping Day 2
In yesterday’s discussions, you shared a lot of different ways of considering the balance between synchronous and asynchronous teaching. We found your strategies for organizing your online course well considered, and most of you have a pretty good idea of what will be done synchronously and asynchronously. We noted the concern around “keeping the pacing of synchronous and asynchronous material the same every week”, which can help avoid confusion for students, especially in an online environment.
What stood out in the discussions is the rethinking of your teaching approach, with a tendency to reduce the amount of synchronous teaching – specifically, less time spent on lecturing, and shifting toward engaging students and answering questions. We also noticed a trend to lean towards a greater reliance on asynchronous content, with the creation of “pre-recorded videos broken into small chunks” to replace lectures, in consideration of a range of factors (e.g. bandwidth, technical requirements, students in different time zones).
You’ve also listed numerous active learning techniques that will be facilitated in synchronous sessions. To name a few: problem solving, case studies, group presentations, debates, student-led review sessions, small group discussions.
As with Day 1, we noticed that a number of you jumped into the discussion and shared strategies with one another and showed empathy with some of the challenges. We expect that as you move through the remainder of the course you will be able to develop strategies and approaches to help you puzzle through some of the challenges, and/or get a better sense about how to access additional resources to bolster your ability to address them.
Looking Ahead to Day 3
We’ve just released Day 3 entitled “Teaching Presence”. You can now access the content and contribute to the discussions at the end of the module.
This part of the workshop will focus on helping you define your teaching presence online. Teaching presence can indeed play an important role and positively impact student online learning, and it is one of the key areas that many of you have expressed concerns about in the shift to online learning.
We will release Module 4 at the end of the day today.
We are looking forward to meeting you all at
10:00 AM today. This first session will be held using Zoom.
(Link has been removed because content is not present or cannot be resolved.)
Welcome to Day 2: Planning for Online Blended Learning
Good morning and welcome to Day 2 of Transitioning to Teaching Online.
Sharing a virtual coffee or tea with you
In this announcement, we will recap and summarize yesterday’s discussion activity and discuss Day 2, which focuses on balancing synchronous and asynchronous teaching approaches.
Recapping Day 1
The discussions shared for day 1 of the program were really substantial yesterday. While we typically respond to fewer posts, there were so many important questions asked on the discussions and important points brought up that we spent more time than usual answering you all.
A point that came up again and again in the discussion was how challenging transitioning online in September felt for many of you. The challenges you noted included community and student engagement, teaching across time-zones, lack of technical support/knowledge, transitioning labs and classes with interactive face-to-face elements, and overall how to create quality asynchronous and synchronous learning for your students. We hope that we were able to share resources and strategies to help with some of the challenges. We also noticed that a number of you jumped into the discussion and shared strategies. We also expect that as you move through the remainder of the course you will be able to develop strategies and approaches to help you puzzle through some of the challenges.
As we were going through the discussions, the post written by Vincent Chen in response to another participant set a positive tone that we wanted to share with you in case you missed it.
I want to believe we can all do this online learning, and do it well!….
One of the questions that we asked yesterday was for those who transitioned online to share what they wish they had done in hindsight. In case you haven’t had the chance to read through all of these we wanted to share them. These suggestions are gold.
- Have TAs present during lectures to help respond to questions
- Have clear expectations around communication and engagement
- Establish a greater visual presence in the course, instead of relying heavily on text-based interactions with students via discussion boards.
- Consider including more video contact either through lectures recorded on Camtasia or videoconferencing.
- Take more time to learn how to use the necessary technologies and software in advance.
- Add more visual appeal to the website.
- As the 2nd reading explained, a little can go a long way here.
- I would add a break/question slide into my lectures after each 10-min lecture to remind myself to give students time for questions and discussions.
- Create specific discussion topics to facilitate the discussion, and use poll/quiz functions to test students’ understanding.
- I found the chat sidebar worked fine for my small class, as a way to answer student questions and see how students were doing, but when I’ve participated in larger online “courses” myself the chat was a distraction and I could not follow the presenter and keep up with the chat. I am thinking that in my large classes, I will turn that off. I’d rather stop every 5-10 minutes to ask for questions and ask students to use the “raise hand” feature if they need to have their questions answered before the next break.
- My three disaster tips: (1) be able to hear the students. Chat sucks as a way to engage discussion. (2) be able to feel like there is an audience. Staring at the wall sucks. (3) Have equipment that works. Should have taken a sabbatical!!
- Look to more experienced online instructors for guidance. This is a novel situation, but online teaching has existed before.
- Offer flexible and adaptable means of connecting/carrying out assessments for students
- Less is more.
- Be patient with yourself and with your students.
- New contexts bring new opportunities for growth (but it isn’t always easy!)
Looking Ahead to Day 2
As you may have noticed, we just released Day 2 entitled “Planning for Online Blended Learning”. You can now access the content and contribute to the discussions at the end of the module. This part of the program explores asynchronous and synchronous teaching in more detail and guides you through balancing these approaches in your teaching. We will release Module 3 at the end of the day today so that you have some time to prepare before our first virtual session on
Wednesday, June 24, from 10:00 – 11:30 am.
(Link has been removed because content is not present or cannot be resolved.)
This will be held using Zoom.
See you all online,
Charlyn, Kari, Lucas, Manuel
Welcome to Day 1: Approaching Online Teaching and Learning
Welcome to Day 1 of Transitioning to Online Teaching. In this announcement, we will briefly discuss some of the contributions that many of you made over the weekend and share what you will be working on today.
It was exciting to see how quickly many of you jumped into the course and started sharing your introductions, and the challenges that you were dealing with as you transitioned online this summer or fall. The last time we facilitated this course, many people created short welcome videos for their introduction. This time many of you created introduction videos and some of you took a different approach and shared pictures and videos of you outside enjoying nature. If you have a chance, look through the introduction post and view videos of family surfing trips, skiing, and the arctic ocean to name a couple.
You also started bringing up a number of challenges that you are facing right now including: working across timezones, limited technical support, and course content that has always been taught face-to-face.
Finally, there are a couple of interesting discussions that Boris started in the General Discussion area. One centered on asset management systems and the other discussed how we set communication expectations for our students.
We will be sharing resources throughout the week that we hope can help with some of these initial conversations, and we look forward to furthering the discussion.
Looking Ahead to Day 1
It looks like some of you have already started working through the Day 1 content and activities. In today’s module, we share some foundational concepts in online learning and strategies for moving our course online. The goal of today is to help ground the group in key areas of online learning before we move more into asynchronous and synchronous teaching and learning tomorrow. To get started moving through the day 1 content and activities begin at the day 1 overview to read a description of the overall structure for the day.
For today’s discussion activity, you will be sharing further about your course context and strategies for moving online. This activity is a way to share what moving online looks like for each of us. It is also a forum to share successful strategies that we are already using in the online space.
See you all online,
Charlyn, Kari, Lucas, Manuel
Welcome
Thank you for joining us for this condensed course on “Transitioning to Online Teaching” (TOT) using a blended learning approach. We are looking forward to working with you in the coming week. In order to maximize the utility of these five days for you, we recommend the following preparations in advance of Monday, June 22.
Have a course in mind: Think about (and arrive on Day 1 with) a specific course that you would like to reimagine or transform in alignment with a blended learning approach. You may wish to have your existing syllabus and/or your canvas course accessible so that you can work directly on those documents/platforms. If you do not have an existing course that you would like to work on, this may be an opportunity for you to build out certain components of a future course (If this is the case, please let us know so that we can best give you alternative suggested activities).
Schedule: As a reminder, the program will run from Monday, June 22 to Friday, June 26. It is primarily asynchronous, except for our two synchronous sessions and one (optional) synchronous drop-in session:
- Synchronous Session 1: Wednesday, June 24th, 10-11:30 am
- Synchronous Session 2: Friday, June 26th, 1-2:30 pm
- Collaborate Link (You can also access by clicking on the Collaborate Link in the Canvas course menu)
- Synchronous Drop-In “Learning Lounge” This is an optional, informal drop-in space in Collaborate where you can connect with the facilitators and your peers, and bring any questions you have. It will be held Thursday, June 25th from 10-2 pm Collaborate Link (You can also access by clicking on the Collaborate Link in the Canvas course menu)
Getting Started: We suggest that on or before Monday (Day 1), you go to the TOT Canvas course and click the “Get Started” button or go to the Introduction Module. In that module, you’ll be encouraged to introduce yourself in the Introductions Discussion.
*Bonus points if you use a video introduction! The rest should be self-explanatory if we’ve done our jobs effectively!
We know that these uncertain times are challenging for everyone in unique ways, and we appreciate that you’ve opted to spend this time enhancing your aptitude for blended online learning. We hope that this will be a useful and meaningful week, so please let us know anytime if there is something we can do to make it better for you.
Sincerely,
the course facilitators
Lucas, Charlyn, Manuel, and Kari