What Do You Do When You Suddenly Must Teach Online?

I don't know if you recall the movie Speed, where Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock are on a bus that cannot go under 50 mph or it will blow up. But if you do, you may recall this line, from the bad guy to the good guy:

Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? What do you do?

On college campuses that are closing their face-to-face classrooms and moving to online learning, faculty are now driving that bus. If Coronavirus is the bad guy in all this, picture it saying:

Pop quiz, professor. There's a course that has to finish. You just found out your campus is closed, you're teaching online. If you don't pull this off, your students will suffer. What do you do? What do you do?

If you, or a faculty member you know, is suddenly faced with moving a course that's already in progress online, and is wondering, what do I do?, what do I do?, here are some ideas for getting organized and deciding what to do.

Take stock

Does your course already have an associated Learning Management System (LMS) instance?

At many colleges, courses automatically get a companion site in the campus LMS. Sometimes faculty never use the site, but it's there. But that's not always the case.

• If your course does have an LMS instance, are you using it?
• If you are using it, to what extent?
• If it does not have an LMS instance, how soon will your IT teams have one up and ready for you?

What support will your IT and Centers for Teaching have ready to help you?

You have very smart people you can call upon. For example, Michelle Miller's great advice on going online in hurry, offers links to wonderful examples of resources from colleagues who offer professional support for online teaching and technology. Who are the people on your campus who know about teaching online? If you do not know them, or if your campus doesn't have enough of them, visit Miller's piece to get some help.

Get your bearings

What work remains to be done in your courses?

 How many projects yet to be completed and turned in? How many practice quizzes yet to be assigned and taken? How many tests yet to be given and scored? How many class sessions with lectures?, with class discussions?, with small group work?

Do you have student emails and phone numbers?

Can you reach out to your students now, without an LMS?

Take action

Email your students (or text them, if you have the means).

• Ask if they are safe, well, and how their families are. If they are not with family for whatever reason, are they someplace safe?
•  Find out what kind of internet access they have. Will they all have reliable high speed access? Will some be relying on public WiFi spots -- coffee shops, libraries -- which may not always be open?
•  For students with unreliable access, preserve low-fi options -- text only options. For example don't rely only on video streaming a lecture. Also provide lecture notes and slides. 

If you are going to be using an LMS to teach fully online, use only what you need.

• Upload your syllabus, or the portion of it that remains to be done.
• Create one discussion forum to start.
• Make use of the announcements tools to update students regularly.
• Decide if you want to collect papers for grading by email or an LMS drop-box.
• If you have TAs who help in your course, assign them different duties for getting online elements ready in the LMS.

Accept trade offs

When a book gets made into a movie, it is no longer a book.

Some things that work on page, don't work in a movie. The movie captures an important element differently. The same applies when a face to face class goes fully online. Here are two examples

• Example 1, if you use quizzes as knowledge checks and to help students study, and have been scoring them by hand, see if a textbook publisher, or OER resource, has ready-for-LMS versions. If they do not, recommend to students they still use them as study aids, and instead of grading, use the time to discuss each week one or two of the most challenging questions.
• Example 2, communication without body language via discussion boards differs from in class discussions with body language. You cannot tell by looking online who is eager to say something and who is slouching and hoping to not be called upon. You will learn to "see" engagement through the frequency and quality of posts and replies.
• The tools for moderating the discussion differ as well. You cannot call on people online in the same way you can in a class. In a classroom, you might say, "Janelle makes a good point when she says <recap her point>. It contrasts nicely with <another classmate's remark>. What do you make of the contrast?" Online, that same kind of moderating move might be made by your posting a new comment with the subject line "Important Points to Contrast".

Embrace opportunities

Chances are, this will change your teaching. Find the good in that.

• The shy student who didn't say much in class may participate more in an online discussion.
• Group work that required students to find time to meet outside of class can shift to e-mail coordination. Or you can create team discussion forums, giving students a meeting place in your LMS. This shift to digital team working is an example of learning how to adjust and to use skills – digital meeting and working – that will be part of your students’ educational and professional lives.

Take care

Think 'small ball'.

Small ball in baseball is the idea of getting base hits rather going for home runs. (Hat tip to James Lang for bringing the metaphor to teaching.) Do the same here. Accomplish one goal at a time as you move online. Get students back on track first, up and running. Get one week 1 online, then while they do that week’s work, build out weeks two and three. One base at a time.

Include students in the work.

Ask for their suggestions. Be flexible. They want to succeed as much as you want them to succeed. Don't feel you have to do this all on your own. They'll have good ideas. If something is new for you, tell them. Get everyone working together and helping out. 

Accept failure.

This will be an experiment of sorts. It will be okay if not everything works. Expect some confusion. If you stay calm, your students will stay calm. You'll be teaching them how to try again if something doesn't work out.

Have fun.

Sure that sounds odd, given the stress of suddenly moving your course and students from f2f to online. But you're still teaching. You're still working with students. You'll be learning new strategies; they'll be learning from you in new ways. Find joy in that. Inject humor or appreciation when and where you can. Celebrate and recognize when things go well, when students do good work or help you figure out how to do something in the new circumstances.