Plan Ahead
The following questions may help professors work through the process of addressing alternative course delivery methods, and to assess the potential of "alternative" course delivery in current courses.
- What method or methods of online delivery would be appropriate/feasible? Appropriate methods depend on your familiarity with available tools and the information you need to deliver (lectures, slides, exams).
- Is the course content amenable to online delivery for some period of time via the Canvas learning management system?
- If not, what can I do now to prepare?
- What training or support do I need to successfully switch to some form of “online delivery” mode?
- How can assessments be carried out electronically?
- You can use Assignments in Canvas to collect student assignments, and you can use Canvas Quizzes to deploy quizzes, tests, or polls to students.
Considerations for Faculty
- Consider ways to help students continue work even if they cannot come to class by reviewing your course outcomes and assignments.
- Consider adding plans to your syllabus for proceeding with teaching during an unanticipated event that disrupts planned course meetings. Even if you don't specify plans, explain on the syllabus how you would inform students if you need to make unanticipated changes in the course.
- Publish your Canvas course in advance of an event.
- Be prepared to answer student inquiries about making up work. There may be many student requests for special accommodations, so have plans in place for alternative assignments that will treat all students equitably and be feasible in the face of large numbers of requests.
- Encourage students to find a "class buddy" to assist with missed class notes or assignments. The buddy could also call an absent student during class, so that student could listen to the lecture via cell phone.
- Visit the Virtual Teaching and Learning page to learn about the technology available to you for alternative course delivery.
*The recommendations on this site were adapted from the materials provided by the University of Michigan's Center for Research on Learning and Teaching "Recommendations for Teaching During a Flu Outbreak" site.
Using Canvas you can:
Canvas is FAU's web-based course management system. It provides tools for course management, communication, assessment, grade management and collaboration. More information here: Canvas.
- Post lectures, documents, external links, and other information.
- Post announcements
- Email individual students, groups, or the whole class
- Collect and evaluate student work.
- Manage, communicate and share assessment data with students.
- Administer tests and surveys to evaluate student knowledge, measure student progress, and gather information from students.
- Use Discussion Boards to facilitate communication and engagement through asynchronous discussion of course concepts and material.
- Create groups within courses and provide access to private email, chat, file exchange and discussion forums.
- Organize students into groups for collaborative creation of dynamic websites with multi-media content.
- Post narrated lectures.
- Use Webex to host online class with audio, video, and an interactive whiteboard or hold virtual office hours.
Mediasite can provide a method for recording lectures or classroom sessions and making them available online.