Teaching in the Disciplines,
With Compassion & Focus amid Disruption
A Compendium of Resources: Please Add to It!
Note: this document is now published to the web (which is a viewable version, not an editable version): I’m working on making access more stable and open! Note that many editors at once can cause it to lock access. If that happens to you, just request access (of course, if it happens to you, you can’t see this). Readers might want to bookmark the published-to-web-link, and trust that the document will get unlocked within a few hours. I’m monitoring it now that I know about the problem. -sh
This document was originally started in March 2020, when North American higher education institutions started a rapid transition to remote instruction. Its original intent was to share ideas
about how to keep teaching, with compassion, when campuses are moving to remote instruction with very little lead time. As the pandemic continues, this document evolves, collecting resources, both disciplinary and general, about teaching in a pandemic. At UVM, both the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Writing in the Disciplines program have started creating local resources, and we’ve been sharing links in a UVM teaching continuity Facebook group as well. This page collects useful resources so that faculty who want to dive a little deeper have places to start. Readers can edit--please add! The best thing we can do together is share ideas.
This document’s sections:
General Resources for Pivotal/Nimble/Resilient Teaching
Affective Issues, for Faculty and Students
Accessibility
General Resources
Disciplinary Resources
Multi-disciplinary
Sciences
Creative and Performing Arts
Dance
Studio Art
Theatre
Music
Production/Film
Languages
Linguistics
History/Classics/Art History
Mathematics
Composition/Writing Studies
Service-Learning or other Community-Based Courses
Resources for Students
Quick Transitions to Online Teaching
General Resources for Pivotal/Nimble/Resilient Teaching
Affective Issues, for Faculty and Students
- Equity Unbound – OneHE: community building ideas for online teaching
- The Single Most Essential Requirement in Designing a Fall Online Course: HASTAC’s Cathy Davidson argues that humane teaching should be our fall priority
- Leading Our Classes Through Times of Crisis with Engagement and PEACE. Donald Saucier and Tucker Jones, Kansas State University, describe a philosophy that prizes instructor engagement with a focus on guiding students through accepting current changes and fostering optimism. It’s a rich piece.
- A “COVID Page” for a fall syllabus: communicating empathy and support for students, by Dr. Christopher Jones
- “Hope Matters: Ten Teaching Strategies to Support Students and Help Them Continue to Learn in this Time of Uncertainty” article by Mays Imad from Inside Higher Education, offers a short list of suggestions to re-establish connections to our students and allow them to learn better, written by a neurobiologist who studies learning, emotions, stress, and the brain.
- “Teaching Online with Care: This crowdsourced document gathers resources and perspectives designed to take care for us and our students. If you’re worried about the stress of a quick transition, check out this document’s wise suggestions for how to think about connecting with students and making compassionate, smart choices.
- Amy Young’s distillation of lessons from a quick-teaching-online workshop: a set of practical tips for managing expectations. It has practical teaching tips that could be in the quick transition online section of this document, but I put it here because its tone is reassuring on the importance of stripping things down to fundamentals.
- Please do a bad job of putting your courses online: Discussion of the very real barriers to education that students may experience, and the very real need for us to keep expectations authentic and simple
- Humanizing Online Education (Mary Raygoza, Raina León, and Aaminah Norris, St. Mary’s College): This document emphasizes “pedagogical practices that promote care for the whole student and class collective.”
- Consider pointing your students to resources on mindfulness to help diffuse the stress and anxiety that come in times of worry, uncertainty, and upheaval. Mindful.org is one good place to start. Apps like Breathe, Calm, Oak, Ten Percent Happier, and more are available for free or at varying costs to offer guided meditations.
Accessibility
- Accessible Teaching in the Time of COVID-19: Aimi Hamraie’s suggestions draw from disability community pedagogies, emphasizing the opportunity to create accessible materials from the start. (Note from John Pirone: Please pay close attention to your transcripts for any errors only if you use apps that help generate transcripts from audio. I highly recommend that you create captions or transcripts on your own.)
- Lauren Cagle’s survey about student technology access: a good way to survey what technology your students have access to
- Danya Glabau’s survey about student technology access: a good way to survey what technology your students have access to
- George Washington University Library’s guide to making course material accessible: While much of the document mentions GW-specific offices/resources, the document is a nice practical overview of accessibility issues
General Resources
Disciplinary Resources
Multi-disciplinary
- Raising the Bar: Disciplinary perspectives on online education at research universities, brought together by the Reinvention Collaborative
- Bringing a Multilingual and Multicultural Lens to WAC: Some Considerations for Supporting Multilingual Students Through Distance Learning (COVID-19 Update, March 2020, by Cornell University’s Michelle Cox; language is for Cornell but can freely be adapted to other contexts)
- A spreadsheet of various disciplinary resources being collected through POD (the Professional and Organizational Development Network): check to see if your discipline is here.
- Collection of Online Teaching Resources: This spreadsheet, organized by Northern Virginia CC’s Breana Bayraktar, is sortable by discipline, and has many more general links applicable to multiple disciplines
- The Modern Language Association’s Bringing Your Course on Line
- Online lesson planning for suddenly teaching seminars online: from the Active Learning in Political Science blog, but applicable to many disciplines
- Improve Breakout Groups with Collaborative Document Editing: this political science resource is applicable to many disciplines
- The University of Minnesota’s Center for Educational Innovation has compiled resources around courses with experiential components: resources collected here address various experiential components such as field work, clinical work, hands-on making, arts and performance.
- Merlot: Browse by discipline. See Merlot’s Virtual Labs by discipline, too.
Social Sciences
Sciences
- Science/Labs: Online science simulations, lab resources, and other media that may be useful.
- Open Educational Resources: Extensive resources for simulations and virtual labs, compiled by the Arthur Lakes Library at the Colorado School of Mines.
- Science lab resources from Harvard: Open to users anywhere, this page has a combo of strategy tips and links to lab resources
- Various video labs from NC State: Chemistry, GeoForAll
- JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments): All science video content is free through June 15.
- Biology: Includes links to some open-source data sets as well as more general tips on teaching biology online suddenly
- Biology labs: Introductory biology lab material from JoVE, free through 15 June 2020.
- Biology: Core textbook from JoVE, free through 15 June 2020
- Ecology and Environmental Science Materials for Teaching Online: Crowdsourced document
- Geology: 2-D and 3-D fossils, courtesy of the University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology
- Geosciences: A crowd-sourced spreadsheet covering online lectures, online labs and field trips, guest lecturers, online resources
- Geosciences: Resources from Teach the Earth: Teaching Geoscience Online, from the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, hosted by Carleton College
- Psychology: the American Psychological Association maintains an Online Psychology Laboratory, in which students can engage in experiments, or analyze available data. See also the Teaching of Psychology Idea eXchange (ToPIX), developed by APA’s Division 2, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP).
- Social Psychology: Core textbook from JoVE, available free through 15 June 2020
Creative and Performing Arts
See the Minnesota compilation in the multidisciplinary section above, too.
Dance
- Dance: From the Dance Studies Association
Studio Art
Theatre
- Theatre: Compiled by Daphnie Sicre, Loyola University, this document starts with many general tips/resources about teaching online; the second half of it is specific to teaching theatre courses.
- Teaching Theatre Online: from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education
- Digital Theatre +: This usually-paid site is offering free access in this moment. The front part of the site is unclear about terms of the trial period--maybe someone in theatre has a better sense of the offer?
- Diversities in Actor Training “an online resource edited by David Fancy and hosted by Brock University, a timely and necessary intervention” Rollie, E. (2018) Review. Theatre Research In Canadae. p.128.
Music
Production/Film
Languages
- CARLAtech - info on tech applications for teaching language (F2F integration or online classes)
- Learning to Teach Online --language focus if possible, but general info applicable to K-college appears here too
- International Association for Language Learning Technology (IALLT) is hosting webinars on teaching in the pandemic. As the recordings come available, they are posted at the FLTMAG website. Upcoming webinars: see https://iallt.org/resources/webinars/.
- Ohio State University Press has made its Language Files textbook freely available online.
History/Classics/Art History
Mathematics
Composition/Writing Studies
- The Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE) Hub: Online? Just in time!: This comprehensive, user-friendly resource designed for this moment of sudden transition points you to a forum where you can ask questions, free webinars on various dimensions of online writing instruction, and contact info for GSOLE. The organization has sprung into action to provide people to answer questions and resources available to non-members.
- Tips from Sara Webb-Sunderhaus, Miami of Ohio: Webb-Sunderhaus draws on her long experience teaching writing online to offer some specific tips for teaching online (e.g. boundaries around email responses, using audio responses) to manage a sudden transition. It’s a nice combination of comforting and practical.
- Online Writing Instruction Open Resource: “Teaching Online Write Now: Tips for Teaching Writing Online”
- Tips for Teaching Writing Online: From the University of Arizona Writing Program and WAC director, this document has some links specific to UA’s writing curriculum, but most of the document will be helpful to anyone teaching writing.
- Feedback Cultures - A Guide For Teachers Thinking about Moving Student-Centered Learning Online: Bill Hart-Davidson, Michigan State University, on ways to think about the types of interactions instructors want to encourage
Service-Learning or other Community-Based Courses
- Service-Learning or Internship-based Courses:
At UVM, all service-learning courses must transition non-classroom activities to remote delivery. This includes for-credit internships. The only non-classroom activities that can continue are practica in departments where these practica are licensing requirements.
- Resources will be posted to www.uvm.edu/celo by Monday. For assistance with ending service or transitioning it to remote, email CELO Director Susan Munkres at smunkres@uvm.edu.
Resources for Students
- Northwestern’s tips for graduate students: how to manage online courses (written for online learning in typical times)
- Online students’ manual for success: emphasizes common problems students have and strategies for success (written for online learning in typical times)
- Help! I didn’t sign up for this!: Texas A&M’s Dana Dang (Videographer and Editor) Catharina Laporte (Producer) made this short video to help students adjust to fully online learning. Friendly and helpful.
Quick Transitions to Online Teaching
The resources in this section were written last March, when institutions were quickly pivoting to remote instruction.
- Inside Higher Ed, “Preparing to Move Online Quickly”: This article emphasizes principles (like “Standardize, templatize, systematize”) to simplify focus in the rush to move courses online
- Chronicle of Higher Ed, “How to Teach Online”: If you’ve never taught online, this article may be a useful introduction to some basics and some myths
- Teaching Online with Email and a Phone: The article actually mentions a few more tools than phone and email, but it’s a very stripped-down look at how to think about connecting with students.
- Stanford University’s “Teaching Effectively During Time of Disruption”: this document lays out various tech possibilities and pedagogical scenarios. While some of it references Stanford’s context, its advice is generally useful anywhere
- HASTAC’s compilation of moving-online-quickly resources: This compilation of resources includes specific technology suggestions, but more importantly guides our thinking in triaging course elements to emphasize first in a remote environment.
- Steven D. Krause’s Help! I Suddenly Have to Teach Online!: Krause, who’s been teaching online for years, boils his advice down to: “You’re going to have to muddle through as best you can...Being required to move everything online in the middle of the semester in 72 or so hours is not online teaching. This is a lifeboat, a means of getting everyone safe and sound to the end term.” This page guides us to keep things simple, to ask for help from students and colleagues as well as faculty development offices. He discusses specific strategies, but mostly has excellent thoughts on how to approach a sudden shift.
- Portland State University’s Remote Exam Kit: While some of this page references PSU’s course management system, the principles here will help you think through exam options
- UT El Paso’s Center for Instructional Design’s Transitioning to Remote Teaching provides guidelines particularly for faculty unfamiliar with online teaching and learning.
- A good catalog of problematic issues your students may face that are specific to this crisis, and an argument for not doing an amazing job in this quick transition/emergency basis.
- “Top 10 Tips for Teaching Online” by Shannon VanHorn, Valley City State University.
- Practical advice for instructors faced with an abrupt move to online teaching (opinion): Stephanie Moore and Charles B. Hodges’ Inside Higher Ed piece has helpful principles
- Connecticut College’s teaching-focused 11 Teaching-focused things to Consider when Moving Your Course Online