Background
I have spent the past six years of my career as a teacher building my own digital instruction skills and also leading pedagogy training for my peers. When the California State University system announced in May that fall semester at the 23 CSU campuses would be almost entirely virtual, my campus designed courses for our faculty to take to prepare for redesigning their classes for online instruction. I was asked to lead one section of "Foundations of Virtual Instruction," with faculty learners from multiple disciplines. This summer, we explored key principles of online teaching and learning. We practiced and became more comfortable with digital workflows. We discussed concerns, caveats, and potential pitfalls.
Objective
Now, with classes beginning soon, I'm sharing here as much as I can about lessons learned. Each weekday until instruction begins, I'll provide a new Virtually Autumn post on preparing for online instruction. Some posts will be extensive walkthroughs of topics; others will highlight points that you might choose to reflect on as you prepare for autumn.
My intention is to help faculty help their students succeed. As always, but more so this year, we are all in this together. The future is unclear, and it is in these trying times that we must focus more than ever on quality instruction. In particular, one truth has become more clear to me than ever before. Things are never going to be the same. Change is a universal law, and it is always uncomfortable to be reminded of that law as harshly as we have been in 2020.
Perspective
The best way to survive, and then to thrive, is to be flexible and to be open to new perspectives - and you'll be exposed to some here. The best way for education to survive, and then to thrive, is to help it evolve to meet (and hopefully exceed) the demands of our current environment. The efforts we choose to invest now will pay huge dividends as we proceed to define what the "new normal" will look like. I hope you'll join me in making this process a top priority right now.
Done thoughtfully, we won't just be temporarily shifting instruction online. Instead, we will be seizing this opportunity to create more effective and engaging courses for any mode of instruction. I am not yet a huge fan of online instruction; it is difficult to do well. However, that is true of everything new and of everything worth doing. Although I do believe that in-person instruction is ideal, and I hope to return to it when it is safe, I also believe that face-to-face instruction can be improved - even by adding some components that typify online courses!
Getting Started
To begin, you have to make some big decisions about how to structure your online course. Hopefully, you already have your course learning objectives and content; you're at the point of trying to decide how to translate your face-to-face class to the online environment. This necessarily means you'll be making choices about which tools, like computers and software, you and your students will use. This week, then, I'll focus on ways you might make these decisions in an informed manner and how best to communicate that to your students.
Blog Schedule
| Weekly Theme | Date | Title |
| How to start | 7/21 | Where we are headed |
| 7/22 | Learn about the learners | |
| 7/23 | Syllabus considerations | |
| 7/24 | Communicate now | |
| Media Resources | 7/27 | Onboarding students |
| 7/28 | What, when and why video record | |
| 7/29 | How to record | |
| 7/30 | Video distribution and accessibility | |
| 7/31 | Video concerns | |
| Engagement | 8/3 | Synchronous activities |
| 8/4 | Zoom meetings | |
| 8/5 | Building community | |
| 8/6 | Prompting interaction | |
| 8/7 | Group work | |
| Assessment | 8/10 | Deadline flexibility |
| 8/11 | Format flexibility | |
| 8/12 | Cheat-resistant exams | |
| 8/13 | Assessment accessibility | |
| 8/14 | Tidbits - taking virtual attendance & making Google docs copies for your students | |
| Wrapping Up | 8/17 | An eye on the future |
| 8/18 | Summary |
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