The coming period will likely combine offline and online teaching, with an emphasis on the latter. This will continue to ask a lot from teaching staff, and we remain committed to helping as much as we can by providing technical and didactic information relevant to these circumstances, as well as support.

Getting started in this new environment should be easy: those of you familiar with the original Canvas Keep on Teaching pages, will already recognise most of the tiles on the Keep on Teaching homepage. We have kept these for the sake of familiarity and accessibility. If you are new here, you will find most of the titles self-explanatory, though it could not hurt to spend a few minutes clicking through them. In either case, getting started with your teaching in these extraordinary circumstances starts with the steps below.

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.

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