Teaching Online Resources
To assist with instructional continuity during COVID-19
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Google Doc Owner: Florence Martin, Learning, Design and Technology, Florence.Martin@uncc.edu UNC Charlotte Google Doc Administrators: Beth Oyarzun, Learning, Design and Technology, UNC Charlotte; Garvey Pyke, Heather McCullough, Kiran Budhrani, Enoch Park, and Bruce Richards, Center for Teaching and Learning, UNC Charlotte
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Best Practices (Both Synchronous and Asynchronous)
- Best Practices Online Pedagogy - Harvard - Best practices and suggestions focusing on the most common teaching practices that are effective in an online environment.
- How to Be a Better Online Teacher - Chronicle - A practical teaching guide providing advice on how to make your online pedagogy as effective and satisfying as the in-person version.
- Teaching effectively during disruption - Stanford - A Google document offering several suggestions for instructors on offering a student-centered learning experience in a remote or online learning environment.
- Prepare to Move Online (in a Hurry) - Considerations to ensure as successful a transition to online courses (InsideHigherEd.com)
- Going Online in a Hurry - A list of guides detailing how several colleges and universities have moved quickly to place their face-to-face courses online (What to do and where to start - Chronicle).
- Quality Matters Emergency Remote Instruction Checklist (also video introduction of the checklist) - A Quality Matters (QM) checklist of considerations, tips, and actionable strategies to enact during an institutional move to temporary remote instruction of classroom-based courses.
- Coronavirus Has Led to a Rush of Online Teaching. Here’s Some Advice for Newly Remote Instructors - EdSurge (Young, 2020) - A quick primer for first-time online teaching instructors.
- What Online Students Want: Flexibility, Feedback, and Connection - Educause (Quirk & Young, 2016) - A comprehensive finding from a panel of undergraduate online student learners on how well do schools deliver online courses.
- MERLOT/SkillsCommons - curated resources for instructors and students on self-assessments for readiness for online learning, virtual labs, competency-based tutorials on college skills, and free technologies (Adobe, FlipGrid, and TechSmith).
- Temporary Teaching Online Resources from James Madison University - A number of resources for both students and faculty for online learning and teaching.
- A Beginner’s Guide to Online Teaching and Learning - Inside UNCC
- “Next Week, You Will Teach Your Courses Online”: A Reassuring Introduction to Pandemic Pedagogy - provides a helpful, demystifying and comforting first read for faculty who have just received online transition orders from their institution (Ebner, 2020)
Asynchronous Teaching (Separated by Time and Distance)
- Best Practices for Teaching Online (YouTube Video: 22 minutes) - Start with this one.
Presentation on course preparation, design, expectations setting, instructor presence, content presentation, interactions, engagement, communication, feedback, and assessment. - Developing an Online Course on Canvas (YouTube Video: 15 minutes) - Demonstration of how instructors can use their canvas course shell instead of a sandbox or development shell for building an online course.
- Creating Instructor Presence in Online Courses (YouTube Video: 48 minutes) - Webinar on strategies to establish instructor presence.
- ASU’s Best Practices for Large-Enrollment Online Courses: Managing instructor-student communication and presence (Lake, 2019) - Online instructor presence takes many forms, but it can be roughly defined as the extent to which students feel that the instructor is present to support them on a personal level. Consider these practices for faculty to maximize their impact and presence managing high-enrollment courses.
- Enhancing Interaction in your Online Courses (YouTube Video: 36 minutes) - Webinar on three interaction strategies: learner-learner, learner-instructor, and learner-content.
- Faculty Readiness to Teaching Online: Educause resource on ways faculty might use the LMS to support online teaching and learning
Synchronous Teaching (Separated by Distance but Meets at the Same Time)
Sample Online Courses
Online Assessment
Online Collaboration
Discipline-Specific Guides and Resources
- Writing, Languages, and Social Science
- Resources for Moving Your Creative Writing Class Online - Includes 11 sample lesson plans for online courses - Lesson plans and best practices to help faculty make the shift from face-to-face to online teaching.
- Global Society of Online Literacy Education - Walk-in webinars and archives
Topics include: User-centered design, Google tools, facilitating collaboration, OWI/OLI principles; Canvas, teaching presence, writing process assignments, asynchronous discussion, responding to student writing; asynchronous discussion, peer review, course design - Teaching Coronavirus—Sociological Syllabus Project - Sample syllabus ideas
- Putting Our Language Courses Online - Curated list of resources, tools, sample lesson plans
- Organic Chemistry Resources (community of chemistry faculty members) - A collection of resources for online lab and other resources for online chemistry courses.
- Catalyst Education Labs - 3 weeks free contingency labs for Introductory Chemistry, GOB/Nursing Chemistry, General Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry
- Connected Chemistry Curriculum (Stieff Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago) - Interactive simulations for 9 units of chemistry curriculum (designed for the Chrome browser).
- Chem101 Webinars - An overview of the Chem101 active learning platform including how you can use it to engage students (Free signup needed to access the webinars)
- Online chemistry & biochemistry animations, videos, simulations & demos (with active links) (Stacey Lowery Bretz, Miami University) - Curated list of websites to online animations, videos, simulations, and demos created in the the chemical education and biochemical education communities.
- NCSU Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Teaching Lab (YouTube) - Curated list of videos from the NC State Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Teaching Laboratories.
- OpenOChem - Interactive site to easily create, modify, administer and collaborate on homework assignments, quizzes and practice problems for chemistry.
- Curated Online Resources for BIOL Courses (Tonya Bates, UNC Charlotte) - Biology specific lessons and tools for virtual labs
- Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy (BIOL 4293-L): Curated list of 3D vertebrate anatomy models (David Blackburn, UFL).
- American Society for Microbiology (ASM) - Resources includes cases, lesson plans, podcasts and videos by topic and audience.
- SimBio - at home active, simulation-based experiments, hands-on exploration, auto-graded quizzes, interactive chapters (free if your school has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic)
- Morphosource.org - Duke university hosts 27,000 3D models of biological specimens (largely skeletal material) viewable on the web browser. Half (around 13,000) are open access and can be freely downloaded for further visualization or measurement. A spreadsheet listing all of these web-viewable models parsed by element, species, and more is viewable here. This is great for educators organizing online courses using biological specimens.
- Clinical Anatomy (UBC) - Collection of videos, interactive modules, interactive atlas, 3D scans & reconstructions. Contact Dr. Claudia Krebs (twitter: @krebs_claudia) if you need access to illustrations for customized online materials.
- Free Online Anatomy Resources (Courtesy of Kevin Flaherty, Augusta College, IL) - list of resources for anatomy, neuroanatomy, histology, and embryology
Virtual Labs / Alternative Labs
- How to Quickly (and Safely) Move a Lab Course Online (Chronicle) - pedagogical strategies for Instructor-created labs, lab kits, and virtual labs and simulations.
- Curated List of Virtual Lab Resources - POD Network collection of virtual lab resources.
- Merlot Virtual Lab E-Portfolios (Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, Math, Environmental Science, and Physics)
- Catalyst Education Labs - 3 weeks free contingency labs for Introductory Chemistry, GOB/Nursing Chemistry, General Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry
- https://www.labster.com/simulations/ (Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, Medicine and Physics).
- https://www.theedadvocate.org/13-must-virtual-science-lab-apps-tools-resources/ - A compiled list of 13 tools, apps, and resources that allow students to conduct science experiments and investigations virtually.
- https://phet.colorado.edu/ (Mostly K-12) - 158 interactive simulations (download/ embed) and teacher submitted lessons.
- https://www.biointeractive.org/ - Includes 185 videos, 100 interactive media, 145 online activities for college level biology.
- https://esciencelabs.com/ - Online at-home labkit vendor (students purchase kits).
- https://www.golabz.eu/labs - includes 347 online science labs for students 16+ years old.
- http://virtuallabs.stanford.edu/ - Interactive tutorials and hands-on activities for Biology, Medicine, Health, and Humanities.
- https://www.wiche.edu/nanslo - North American Network of Science Labs Online (NANSLO).
- News story on using a virtual lab - Interactive site for supplementing, laboratories for students who are unable to afford or access the real thing.
- GitHub Student Developer Pack Now Features 100-Plus Tools - The GitHub Student Developer Pack has just expanded, now featuring development tools and training from more than a hundred companies.
- SimBio - at home active, simulation-based experiments, hands-on exploration, auto-graded quizzes, interactive chapters (free if your school has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic)
- NCSU Chemistry Lab (VR) by Dr. Maria Gallardo-Williams - DELTA News Article: Virtualizing Organic Chemistry Labs (QR code for access).
Visual and Performing Arts Guides and Resources
- Pedagogical Recommendations
- A Challenging Time – COVID-19 and Related Issues - (National Association of Schools of Art and Design) - A selection of facts, principles, and considerations that may be useful as administrators and faculty members consider local issues and make decisions on remote teaching and learning.
- Pandemic Pedagogy II: Conducting Simulations and Role Plays in Online, Video-Based, Synchronous Courses (Ebner, 2020) - Written with teachers in the fields of negotiation, mediation, conflict management and dispute resolution in mind, this paper addresses these fields’ central teaching tool: conducting simulations and role plays. However, the paper will also be helpful for teachers in fields such as business, nursing, law, social work, education and others, who also utilize simulations as a teaching tool. While our focus is on negotiation and mediation simulations, our suggestions should remain valid across many simulated processes, such as patient interviewing, client counseling, coaching, student advising, etc.
- Art Prof - Video tutorials and project ideas covering a wide variety of artistic mediums and formats; in addition, portfolio examples, critiques, and engagement with the online artist community.
- Creative assignment Ideas for Teaching at a Distance - Center for Experiential Humanities - Ideas for activities students can do on their own or with others, asynchronous activities, end-of-term activities.
- Virtual concerts, plays, museums, zoos, and festivals from home (CNN) - many options for virtual art galleries, museums, art experiences, classical concerts, Operas, plays and ballets, social distancing festivals, broadway shows, cultural sites, zoos and aquariums.
- Virtual Tours from 12 Famous Museums - Experience the best museums from London to Seoul in the comfort of your own home.
- Adobe Creative Cloud - Free access to the Adobe Creative Cloud tools through May for home use by students attending schools that currently only provide lab access.
- Explain Everything - A complete online and mobile whiteboard application.
- Infographic Tools - Free infographic resources
- Video Collaboratory Services
- Can be used for dance/ choreography course
- Video Annotation Tool, developed by UNCC CCI and Dance faculty
- Use Kaltura (My Media) to record their dance
- Allow students to submit their video to a Canvas assignment
- Use Kaltura Media Gallery to showcase all the performances (central location within each course where users can search or view media assigned to the course).
- Students can record voice/ instrument up to 10 min, also mix multiple parts or people as (mix) ensemble on the phone or tablet
- Use Webex - Students perform before the faculty (peers) - Video conferencing tool to support online teaching and learning.
- Use Kaltura (My Media) to record their music; Use a video assignment (with rubric) to submit
- Use Kaltura Media Gallery to showcase all musical performances (How-To)
- Smule (Android & iOS) - paid subscription - Online application that allows students to sing and make music alone or with their peers for a group project
- Artusi (making their music theory software available for free for this semester to any institution required to move to all online instruction because of Covid-19)
- SmartMusic
- Upload practice, comment/ annotate student work, grade.
- Pre-recorded accompaniments are available to practice performance.
- Free until June 30th (Teacher sign up required)
- https://www.smartmusic.com/
- *Used widely in K-12, for adequate level of the contents, faculty need to assess contents.
Teaching Ideas for Service Learning
- Allied Health: How the disease has spread, but also the impact of public health funding cuts, access to health care, the impact of universal sick days or their lack, how we handle infected non-citizens, how we do or don’t assure the safety of health providers, how we ensure sufficient supplies of key equipment from masks to ventilators and hospital beds. Should we have loosened nursing care fine enforcement, as the administration did in December. How our particular health model has handled the epidemic, and what we can learn from other countries like Korea.
- Anthropology: How do language and culture shape the different responses to the disease that we see in different countries? How can this disease specifically which most severely affects the elderly reflect the ways in which societies value and support aging? How do our tendencies toward tribalism impact our individual or common responses?
- Arts programs: Given the current practical constraints, how can artists respond to the crisis in ways that help give us the imagination to respond. With social distancing closing music venues and theatres, how should we collectively support artists and others who can no longer make a living?
- Biology and Environmental Studies: how do viruses like Coronavirus gestate and migrate? Climate change hasn’t been listed as a trigger in this case, but it has increased the spread of viruses like Zika, malaria, dengue fever, chikungunya and West Nile. How do we create policies to mitigate these kinds of risks? Has there been enough funding for these efforts, and how would you raise the revenue if you believe there should be more.
- Business & Economics: Lessons from the epidemic about the appropriate balance between private enterprise and public investment? About the vulnerabilities of global supply chains and how to address them? About a fundamental model that assumes endless growth? How should we support local businesses that are threatened with going under due to external catastrophes--like the small shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues in Seattle or Milan, or artists who can no longer perform, or Seattle’s weekly newspaper, 90% of whose revenue comes from now cancelled events and ads promoting these events. How should governments and corporations support businesses and individuals in these contexts, and how have they. Who has the responsibility for workers who aren’t given sick days, and what are the consequences if they stay on the job?
- Communications and Journalism: What’s the responsibility of journalism and communication in covering an epidemic like this? Giving key practical information? Holding elected officials accountable? Tracking impact in local communities? Tracking and challenging disinformation or the lack of clear information? What do you think of the job they’ve done so far? Is effective coverage damaged by the erosion of local newspapers in the past fifteen years? What happens when the basis of local ads dries up because local events are cancelled and people aren’t going to stores? Is there an appropriate government role to help support local publications, whether weeklies or dailies, like New Jersey’s nonprofit Civic Information Consortium? How do we prevent this from further destroying local newspapers?
- Computer Science: How South Korea has been using apps and GPS tracking to follow and contain the spread of the virus. Whether this could be a model here? Could we do this without accentuating a surveillance society? How coronavirus is affecting the logistics of how people can vote.
- Education: How should K-12 and higher ed institutions balance public health and community needs in this situation? If schools are closed, how do you handle students who depend on their schools for meals, jobs, or special needs services? How should we prioritize education funding vs the social services that support many of the students? Has our education system given us a sense of common connection or emphasized individual academic achievement, and if the latter, does that compromise our ability to function together in moments of crisis? How should we educate students to think about big picture public choices and their role in shaping them?
- English, Composition, ESL, Public Speaking and Rhetoric: Have students write or give talks about how what elected leaders are saying, and how those from different political perspectives frame the crisis. Explore documentation for various claims and the assumptions behind various arguments. Interview fellow students or their families by phone, and describe their experiences. Explore how information and disinformation has travelled and its impact on the epidemic’s spread, including the initial suppression of information in Wuhan. Read accounts of previous epidemics, or novels like Albert Camus’s The Plague. Write essays assessing what the government has done or is doing about the crisis, who is acting and how. Create arguments for policies you believe should be enacted.
- Environmental Studies: How is the way this virus has spread similar or different to viruses like Dengue Fever and Zika whose prevalence has been increased climate changes. How is COVID a warning for climate change disasters, and how could they interact. How could it affect climate change solutions, including in areas like transit?
- Geography: How can Geographic Information Systems be best deployed to visualize the spread of disease? How have migration patterns, population shifts, urbanization, and transportation technologies made our lives more and perhaps in some ways less susceptible to epidemics?
- Government, Political science and Public Policy: Similar to Allied Health--how do we make policy choices affecting key health decisions. How much should we invest resources in planning for emergencies like epidemics, vs dealing with other priorities. Should we subsidize testing, sick leave, additional nutrition and unemployment benefits for affected populations? Whose voices and interests shape decisions to invest or disinvest in preparedness. How should we incentivize production of critical drugs or vaccines if the market may not pay back all the costs? If the virus doesn’t recede quickly, how do we conduct the 2020 campaigns and elections in a manner that doesn’t put more people at risk?
- Graphic Design: What are the most effective ways to visualize the spread of disease? Social Distancing? Hand-washing techniques? How has graphic design contributed to awareness of the disease and the actions needed to to stop it?
- History: How have outbreaks and epidemics been managed and mismanaged in the past? How have communities responded during and after these destructive events? Comparisons between COVID-19 and the 1918 flu, for instance. Examples of how other previous threats have been combatted, like Ebola, SARS, and the H1N1 Swine Flu.
- Hospitality & Travel Industry: How should international travel, hotels or the cruise ship industry address the potential for global pandemics? How do you assure worker and client safety? Are there regulations that would have helped or could help in the future? Is there a public responsibility to bail out industries focused on recreation?
- Industrial Engineering: See business. How we create and manufacture the technologies needed to combat this virus, like medical supplies and tests. How governments work or could work with manufacturers to speed production in a crisis. How we have or haven’t adequately prepared for this crisis.
- Law and Criminal Justice: How do pandemics like this affect prisoners? Immigrants and their rights? How do you balance the necessities of public health with the social needs of communities, and the economic needs of the businesses that will be shut down? How do you address the urgencies of defeating the virus without avoid creating precedents for problematic governmental actions in other spheres?
- Psychology, Sociology, Social Work, Religion: What kinds of approaches work to further voluntary social distancing? How do we maintain health and hope with the stresses created by these situations? How do we create community models to support the health and hope of others? How should we as a society address the isolation created by social distancing? How do congregations keep community while maintaining safety? How do we deal with the vulnerable in times of acute crisis? What are the appropriate roles for elected officials in promoting effective approaches on areas that depend on voluntary action? What are the social impacts of social distancing, and are there alternatives—perhaps online--that will be safe but that will still nurture community?
- Philosophy and Religion: What will the epidemic teach us about who we are as a society? Can we apply philosophical and religious lessons about our connections with each other to the current situation? What choices would they suggest?
- Statistics: The role of statistics and data in understanding this crisis. How political leaders and the public are using or misusing them. The relationship between statistics and public conversation on the key issues related to combatting the virus.
Open and Free Educational Resources (All Disciplines)
Publisher Content Available for Free Upon Request
- WileyPLUS and Knewton - Request to free Online Courseware for Impacted Institutions
- zyBooks - Computer Science, Engineering, Math courseware
- McGraw-Hill - offering free access for the rest of term; complete the online form to get started
- Cengage - Offering students free access to all their digital platforms and 14,000 ebooks through Cengage Unlimited, for the remainder of spring semester. For more information, please reach out to your local representative or submit your email address here.
- Pearson - if students need to switch from printed to digital versions of Pearson materials, students can access materials at no additional cost for the remainder of the term.
- Free and Discounted Educational Technologies - Education technology companies providing free or limited access to their content to help move student learning to online
Digital Video and Screen Capture
- Kaltura Capture - for UNC Charlotte faculty and students, supported tool within Canvas
- Options for DIY video creation (Courtesy of Penn State University College of Earth and Mineral Sciences).
- Camtasia - UNCC has campus license for University issued computers.
- Snag It - TechSmith offering for free (until June 30th).
- Loom Pro - Free for educators and students - Create videos and audio for instantly shareable media.
- Top Picks 32 (Common Sense Media) - From slideshows and stop-motion animation to short films and remixes, video-making is a tried-and-true way to get kids engaged in building, demonstrating, and sharing knowledge.
- Edpuzzle - A free tool that integrates with YouTube and allows you to embed analytical questions w/in their video content. Students can’t advance the video w/out answering the question.
Digital Content Creation
- H5P - to create interactive HTML5 content - Create, share and reuse HTML5 content and applications in the browser.
- Microsoft Sway - Create visually striking newsletters, presentations, and documentation in minutes.
- Adobe Spark - Online application for students to create social graphics, short videos, and web pages for their course projects.
- Google Drawings - (Chrome tool) - Free web-based diagramming software that allows users to collaborate and work together in real time.
- 20 Free Tools to Create Multimedia - List of interactive apps and tools to enrich your stories and boost engagement, from copyright-free images to video, data visualisations, and infographics.
- Digital Tools for Innovative Teachers - Digital tools for making infographics, presentations, videos, animations, as well as tools for assessments, quizzes, and more.
- Educational Resources with Free Subscriptions - Companies offering free services.
- Producing Videos at Home or Office - Benefits of instructor-created video for online courses.
- Using Poll Everywhere - Poll Everywhere blog providing valuable suggestions, tips, & tricks.
Free or Low-Cost Internet Options for Students
Accessibility & Equity
Tips for Students on How to Be Productive
Research Articles & Publications
These studies will benefit both the design and facilitation of online learning and include a number of best practices and strategies.
- Martin, F., Wang, C., & Sadaf. A. (2020). Facilitation Matters: Instructor Perception of Helpfulness of Facilitation Strategies in Online Courses. Online Learning. 24(1), 28-49
- Martin, F., Wang, C., & Sadaf, A. (2018). Student perception of helpfulness of facilitation strategies that enhance instructor presence, connectedness, engagement, and learning in online courses. The Internet and Higher Education, 37, 52-65.
- Kumar, S., Martin, F., Budhrani, K., & Ritzhaupt, A. (2019). Award-winning faculty online teaching practices: Elements of award-winning courses. Online Learning, 23(4), 160-180
- Martin, F., Ritzhaupt, A. Kumar, S., & Budhrani, K. (2019). Award-winning Faculty Online Teaching Practices: Course design, Assessment and Evaluation, and Facilitation. The Internet and Higher Education, 42, 34-43.
- Bolliger, D. U. & Martin, F. (2018). Instructor and student perceptions of online student engagement strategies. Distance Education, 39(4), 568-583.
- Martin, F. & Bolliger, D.U. (2018). Engagement matters: Student perceptions on the importance of engagement strategies in the online learning environment. Online Learning Journal, 22(1), 205-222.
- Martin, F. & Parker, M.A. (2014). Use of Synchronous Virtual Classrooms: Why, Who and How? MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(2), 192-210.
- Oyarzun, B., Martin, F., & Moore, R. (2020). Time Management Matters: Online Faculty Perceptions of Helpfulness of Time Management Stategies. Distance Education, 41(1), 106-127
- Subramanian, K. & Budhrani, K. (2020). Influence of Course Design on Student Engagement and Motivation in an Online Course. Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 303-308.
- Martin, F. & Oyarzun, B. (2018). Distance Learning. In R. E. West, Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology: The Past, Present, and Future of Learning and Instructional Design Technology. EdTech Books. Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/distance_learning
- Huang, R.H., Liu, D.J., Tlili, A., Yang, J.F., Wang, H.H., et al. (2020). Handbook on Facilitating Flexible Learning During Educational Disruption: The Chinese Experience in Maintaining Undisrupted Learning in COVID-19 Outbreak. Beijing: Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University.
Instructional Continuity and Remote Teaching Resources from Other Universities
Resources from Online Learning Professional Organizations