You probably have an In Case of Emergency (ICE) contact in your cell phone--the person to be called if you have a heart attack on the street, the number accessible even if your phone is locked. You need one for Fall 2020 teaching. It's possible that you, as a teacher, will become ill in the... Continue Reading →
Open-but-Physically-Distant Campuses are Unworkable (And You’d Probably Hate Them)
Last Friday was National College Acceptance Day, the day when colleges traditionally ask students to plunk down their deposits for the next school year. Though many schools have extended that deadline, they remain in a race against students and coronavirus: Many universities keep insisting that campuses will be open in the fall. It's hard not... Continue Reading →
Why was teaching today harder than two weeks ago?
Does it feel like you should have this figured out by now? That because you've made the decisions about how to teach remotely and had a few weeks of it behind you, it should be getting easier? But, somehow, it's not? That's okay. It's not easier for a lot of reasons. Here are a few:... Continue Reading →
Welcoming Students to Their Online Class
This post is part of a series to help you build an online class. If you want to begin at the beginning of the series, start here. A warm relationship with at least one professor is a high leverage practice--one that helps protect vulnerable students from dropping out. Small schools with low teacher to student... Continue Reading →
Privacy from Apps in Online Classrooms
While we should be thinking about student privacy in all settings, online classes present an entirely different set of challenges, given that students are often working from their homesand that they are using technologies that allow them to be viewed and recorded there. This is particularly challenging this semester, when we are teaching students who... Continue Reading →
Building Your Online Classroom Shell: Final Steps
If you’ve been following this series of posts about building an online course by design, you’ve framed your course, selected your materials, chosen your assignments, written your syllabus, established the frame of your online course, added your lessons, and added your activities. This post helps you add the final touches. Has it felt hard and... Continue Reading →
A Reminder of Who is Hurt by Insisting that Students Share Images of their Personal Lives
If you require that students attend live classes digitally, you are putting their privacy at risk. The data that you demand is stolen by tech companies, the class can be terrorized by racists and other kinds of bigots, and the images that you require can be captured by others and circulated online forever. Students and... Continue Reading →
Building Your Online Classroom Shell: Level 3: Lessons and Assignments
If you’ve been following this series of posts about building an online course by design, you’ve framed your course, selected your materials, chosen your assignments, written your syllabus, and established the frame of your online course. In this post, you will be adding your lessons (the material you want them to engage) and the activities... Continue Reading →
Building Your Online Classroom Shell: Level 1 and Level 2
If you’ve been following this series of posts about building an online course by design, you’ve framed your course, selected your materials, chosen your assignments, and written your syllabus. In a typical F2F course, you'd be making copies of your syllabus and writing your assignments. For an online course, it's time to build the shell... Continue Reading →
A Plan for Saving the Fall Semester
By now, virtually everyone has canceled school for the remainder of the year. Some colleges have already announced that summer courses, many of which begin in just a month, will already be taught online; the announcement allows us time to do more than pivot to remote teaching but to build, even if hurriedly, online-by-design courses.... Continue Reading →