Teaching Through Disruptions

The past few years have presented us with a host of disruptions, including fire, smoke, and a pandemic. To ensure the best teaching and learning experience despite such unpredictable events, we recommend the following practices. If you have any questions about how to implement them, feel free to content us by email, phone, Zoom, or in-person. See our current schedule and contact info for the latest on both.

Prioritize course content

All of the material that we put into our course plans is important. However, if a disruption cuts a day or week from our semester, trying to cram all of the missed content into the remaining weeks could be detrimental to both learning and teaching. So take the time to review your course plan and decide, what is most important, and absolutely must be covered? Then prioritize that with your remaining time.

To minimize student confusion, also make sure to remove assignments, etc. associated with the content that you aren’t covering. You can do that easily in Canvas by just un-publishing them.

Upload materials to Canvas

Canvas is a powerful tool to simplify your course administration. By posting your materials to Canvas and making sure that assignment due dates, rubrics, and grade values are accurate, your students will be able to answer many basic questions on their own, freeing your time up for more valuable work.

If you want to learn more about using Canvas or need help with it, you can always ask colleagues in your program who use Canvas, or you can consult the Canvas Instructor Guide. This is the manual for using Canvas as a teacher. And, of course, CTET is happy to do a 1-on-1 consultation or training with you, at your convenience.

Clear Communication

One of the hardest parts of navigating any disruption is separating the true information from the noise and rumors. Make this as easy as possible for you and your students by updating your students frequently about any changes in your course(s), and using one consistent place to post all such updates, such as the Canvas Announcements tool. Then, if you want to further use email, text, or any other messaging service, you can share a link that directs students back to the update at that central location. That way, your students will always know where to find the latest accurate information.

If you need to change assignment due dates, make sure to update the activity’s due dates in Canvas, too. Not only does this automatically alert students to the change, but they will see the new (correct) date in their To-Do list. This is a really easy way to keep students informed about changes to assignment due dates!

Flexibility in assessment and deadlines

Keep in mind that any disruption may have variable impacts on different members of your class. Students who also work or are caregivers, for example, may have different challenges than students who are neither; and may not feel comfortable making their specific situations public. We therefore encourage you to be flexible with deadlines, especially assessment deadlines, for students who may be more affected.

Grades and Gradebooks

Ensuring that your students’ grades are posted in Canvas is one of the most important steps to navigating a teaching disruption. For example, if you suddenly find yourself unable to teach, this allows your department chair to easily access your students’ work so far and ensure that they have instructional continuity and receive their (deserved) final grades in a timely fashion.

Students think that the grades that they see in Canvas are their course grades, so it is important to confirm that all of the grades add up the way that you want them to. If you want a second set of eyes on it, we’re happy to do a 1-on-1 consultation on your gradebook structure at your convenience.

It’s easy to migrate your gradebook into Canvas. The best way is to recreate your various graded activities, such as homework and tests, as Canvas Activities. Canvas will automatically create entries in its Gradebook for each of these activities. You can easily fill in the grades for previous work by just clicking in the box and entering the grade. See below for a series of detailed how-to videos and guides.

Videos and guides

Assignments and Exams

In case of a disruption, some or all of your students may not be able to submit their assignments or come to campus to take exams. If the obstacle is primarily one of access, consider the below ideas to help your students stay on track.

If your students suddenly aren’t able to submit their assignments to you in person, you can collect them via Canvas, instead. The Canvas Assignment tool lets you set granular due dates; review the submissions online or download and print them out; and give your students feedback on their work, up to returning marked-up copies of their assignments to them.
If your students’ assignments include presentations or portfolios, consider letting them demonstrate on video via Zoom or YuJa. They can install either on their personal computers and send you their videos via Canvas.
If you have a rubric that you use to grade assignments, include it with the Assignment using Canvas’ Rubric tool. Not only will you be able to easily grade using the rubric, but your students will also see the rubric as part of the assignment prompt. This will help them understand what success looks like and produce higher quality assignments, even if you can’t connect with them directly to discuss the assignment.
The Canvas Quiz tool can not only accommodate a variety of question types, but also has a number of anti-cheating features. You can draw questions randomly from a pool, decreasing the likelihood that two students will get the same questions. You can set a time limit for completing the test, to limit students’ ability to search for the answers in their notes or on Google; and you can limit the window during which a test is available, to prevent students from sharing the questions with a friend.
Could you allow your students an alternate method of demonstrating their mastery of your course material? You and your students have access to software enabling easy text and video transmission. Consider whether, given the circumstances, these would enable your students to demonstrate their mastery level with sufficient rigor.

Videos and guides

Moving Lectures Online

In case of a disruption, you need to plan for two different challenges related to lectures: what to do if a portion of your class can no longer attend lectures, and what to do if you can’t attend lectures.

If a portion of your students are unable to attend lectures, but the university is still hosting classes, you can record your lectures. A few of the larger lecture halls on campus have a dedicated lecture capture system called YuJa installed already. Otherwise, you can download YuJa onto your computer and record from your personal computer. See our YuJa documentation below for more details on these solutions.

If you yourself can’t attend campus, but the university is still holding classes, you can broadcast your lectures online. You can use Zoom to hold a live videoconference with a large group, and create small breakout “rooms” to facilitate smaller group discussion. You can also record your Zoom sessions so that students who can’t attend live can access the material afterwards. If you have a bit more planning time, you can also record lectures or lecture supplements in advance using YuJa and distribute the videos to your students via Canvas. See our Zoom and YuJa guides below for more information on how to do that.

Videos and Guides

Discussions

Active discussion is one of the foundations of college education. In case of a disruption, here are a few ways to keep your students asking questions and sharing ideas.

Sure, there’s nothing quite like a face-to-face conversation, but don’t count online discussion forums out yet. The asynchronous format of the Canvas Discussion tool encourages students to think more carefully about their comments, and can give more timid students an opportunity to share their voice.
The Zoom videoconference platform lets you create multiple “breakout rooms,” effectively dividing a large videoconference up into a bunch of small meetings. You can use this as part of an online class session to facilitate small-group discussion, the results of which your students can then bring back to the whole class.

Prepare for a return to normalcy

Remember that, after a major disaster, it can take a while for things to actually return to “normal.” Rather than going full-speed on return to in-person, develop a reintegration plan that gradually reintroduces in-person or other disrupted components, to give students (and you!) space to adapt.

Also, take some time afterwards to ask your students about what did(n’t) work. Reflecting on these insights will let you improve your teaching plan for the next disruption.