Responding to Novel Coronavirus: A Faculty Triage Guide for Decision Making

Anne Fensie anne.fensie@maine.edu | Heather Nunez-Olmstead heather.nunez@maine.edu | Ashley Montgomery ashleym@maine.edu 

Triage: Medical vs. Academic

Moving -- Breathing -- Breathing Rate -- Pulse -- Mental State https://chemm.nlm.nih.gov/startadult.htm 

Rebecca Barrett-Fox’s blog post “Please do a bad job of putting your course online”

“Oxygen” -- “Heart” -- “Mind”

Maslow with Caution

Teaching in Times of Crisis from Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching

https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/crisis/ 

Assessing Needs

• Basic Safety, Shelter, Food
• Electronic Device
• Wi-Fi
• Bandwidth
• Disability

Pivoting to Online Course Survey -- make a copy!

What are your Supports?

• IT/Help Desk, Department Head, Center for Teaching & Learning/Faculty Development, Human Resources
• Social Media: #InstructionalContinuity #AcademicTwitter and Facebook groups like Pandemic Pedagogy & the Spring 2020 Online Learning Collective
• POD Network Google Group
• Peers
• Remote Teaching Resources maintained by Daniel Stanford of DePaul University https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VT9oiNYPyiEsGHBoDKlwLlWAsWP58sGV7A3oIuEUG3k/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true
• Accessible Teaching: https://www.mapping-access.com/blog-1/2020/3/10/accessible-teaching-in-the-time-of-covid-19

What is your “Oxygen”?

• Connection
• Continuity
• Care

Sample email message:

From: instructor@university.edu

To: students@university.edu

Subject: Academic Continuity

My dear students,

You may have heard that our school is transitioning online for the remainder of the semester. I’m sure this is pretty unsettling and you have a lot of questions. I do, too! I want to reassure you all that we will get through this together. We are not going to have the class we thought we would, but I am going to do my best to still provide you with a quality learning experience and remain available to you for questions. Please contact me ASAP with any concerns you have about accessing technology or the internet or accommodations.

I don’t have everything planned yet, but here is what you should do in the next week….

Connection

• Social Presence: quality of “being there” in a communication medium
• Stay real: emoticons, stories, humor
• Provide platforms for connection
• Be intentional with connection

Continuity

1. Create a home
2. Clarify expectations
3. Communicate -- How to Outreach Online Students
4. Find your organizational system
5. REALISTIC time management
6. Foster community
7. Feedback

Care

• Reality check
• The reality of transition anxiety
• Environmental impacts on learning
• Managing Expectations
• Making space for feelings

What’s your “Heart”?

• What’s important to you?
• What are your goals?
• How do you want students to feel?

What’s your “Mind”?

• Learning Decisions: What do you want the learning experience to be like? What do you want your learners to do?
• Instructional Decisions: How will you continue to teach? What will you keep? What will you change?
• How do you know what they are learning?
• Modality Matrix comparing F2F, synchronous, & asynchronous ways to meet instructional needs from Keep Calm and Go Online

Resources for Support

• Amy Young’s Facebook Post
• Rule of 2’s: Keeping it Simple as You Go Remote for COVID19: This Twitter thread explains her reasoning behind this worksheet: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1238902797690720258.html
• Remote Teaching Resources for Business Continuity
• Accessible Teaching In The Time Of Covid-19
• Please do a bad job of putting your courses online
• Faculty Resources for making the emergency transition to remote learning