Two months into higher education’s sudden transition to remote teaching, the challenges of this modality are evident to students and faculty alike. Even as we encourage and support students to successful completion of Spring term, we look ahead to Summer Session and Fall term teaching contingencies.
To assist faculty as we move forward, the Center for Teaching and Learning has produced a new infographic on remote learning issues and pedagogical solutions to guide faculty moving forward in this unfamiliar and shifting educational environment. The focus is on three key issues that repeatedly raised by students:
- Zoom fatigue and internet stress
- Unclear instructions or expectations
- Too much for work students to do or unevenly distributed workload
Practical, evidence-based solutions are provided with links to useful resources. For instance:
- To make expectations clear, provide a weekly overview of tasks as the first page in each Canvas module, and give an estimate of expected time required for each task.
- Pivot away from Zoom fatigue by cultivating asynchronous interaction in Canvas with course content, peers and the instructor.
- The problem of uneven workload can be ameliorated by staging assignments with sequential weekly steps and feedback via Canvas, rather than having students complete a term-long project in one or two giant steps.
- A general Canvas Q&A discussion makes an ideal forum for student questions to clarify assignments and expectations. This saves instructors time answering the same question repeatedly via email.
Note that these solutions can be applied to any teaching modality in the coming months. For the latest strategies, tools and techniques, visit Keep Teaching.
We’re with OSU faculty every step of the way. Contact us!
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