This area of the site covers six main considerations when moving from a face-to-face to remote teaching environment. Tutorials and other resource materials are under construction and will be linked on this page on or around March 15, 2020.
Communication
If courses are suspended communicate with your students right away and often. Even if you don’t have a plan in place for your course, communicate with your students as soon as it’s clear that your course will need remote delivery. Be clear with them that changes are coming and what your expectations are for near term engagement with the course. Communication is best done with courses by using the Instructor Systems tool on the Registrar’s website, or by using the Email function of D2L.
Assessment
Offering assessments in a remote setting will require some planning. For remote delivery, the primary concern should be assessing how well students have achieved the key learning objectives and determining what objectives are still unmet. It may be necessary to modify the nature of the assessment to allow for the more limited affordances of the remote environment.
Assignments and Activities
In-class activities and assignments can be facilitated by a variety of the tools provided at MSU. Instructions for assignments and activities can be provided most easily in text format (email, D2L file, Word document, etc.). Consider using the D2L Assignment Tool as it will collect and store individual submissions and allow students to see that they submitted the assignment.
Lecture
Lectures can be created and offered using a combination of Office 365 (PowerPoint), Zoom, Mediaspace, and D2L. This will allow you to give and record your presentation (PowerPoint and Zoom) and deliver it to students (Mediaspace and D2L). We recommend you schedule online sessions during a time your course already occupies. Videos may be recorded via Zoom and then streamed to students via MSU Mediaspace and D2L.
Participation & Engagement
Note that student participation and engagement may be different in a remote teaching instance than in a face to face classroom. For example, in a Zoom meeting some students may not speak due to the mode of communication and/or the technology they are using to connect. We encourage you to be aware of differences in participation and engagement and to be flexible in opportunities for ways that students can participate in the course. Consider using the D2L discussion forums as a means to facilitate asynchronous engagement
Library Resources
Many course readings are already provided at MSU as digital content or in books that students have purchased. If you have any materials that are only available as physical hardcopies and which students do not already own, please contact the library in order to develop a digital strategy. https://lib.msu.edu/about/coursemat/
