Step 1: Be Kind to Yourself
Be kind to yourself. This is still relatively new for most of us, and advice and information keeps changing over time. Set realistic expectations and be sure to convey these to your students. The best you can is good enough. #InThisTogether
Step 2: Communicate with Your Students
It is important to inform your students of your plans and expectations for the near future. This includes:
- Communication: Explain how you will primarily communicatie with students outside of standard lecture hours *e.g. email, Announcements, Discussion Board). This includes informing students how they should contact you and giving them an expected timeframe for response.
- Method: Explain how you will support an online classroom environment (synchronous, asynchronous, combination, evolving plans)
- Tools: Explain the tools you will use to facilitate digital learning (e.g. Canvas Environment, Zoom) and what software (if any) students should download.
- Student Expectations: Be clear but reasonable about what you expect from students in a digital learning environment.
To help you, we recommend the following:
- Use the Announcements Option in Canvas. Post announcements with written or recorded messages for your students. This is the fasted way to communicate with your entire class from within Canvas. We also recommend that you have your students check their notification settings to allow for copies of Announcements to be forwarded to their email address.
- Update Your Contact Information. Make sure to set your Canvas home page to have your contact information.
Step 3: Prepare Your Digital Learning Environment
We recommend that you rely on Canvas as your landing space for your course. With this in mind, make sure all of your course materials are available, and intuitively organised on Canvas. In particular, we recommend:
- Check our recommendations on how to replace offline interaction with online variants. You can use our Quick Education Redesign Tool for fast solutions.
- Make sure all assignments, readings, and relevant instructions are sufficiently clear and easily accessible for students.
- Post (or link to) all relevant documents and presentations.
- Be flexible and make accommodations for assignment due dates and moderating quizzes.