Covid-19: Moving to an online model for your courses

The cancellation of face-to-face classes has come with the directive that classes will be moved online.  We want to emphasize to all faculty that you should not put yourself under unnecessary stress in trying to get content online for students.

Some courses will have a lot of ‘online-ready’ content and others will have very little.  Faculty who have previously taught in an online model and/or have made extensive use of online tools will find it easier to create content/lessons/assessments for their courses.  Faculty who do not have such experience will find this much more difficult.

For all of us, we need to remember a few key points:

  1. You are not being asked to create a fully online version of your course, or of the remaining material in your course.  Building a quality online course takes a lot of time and resources, and nobody has much of either right now.
  2. You are not required to master whole new set of skills as part of this move to online delivery.  Again there is no time for that, and your focus should be on how you will be adjusting the material you will be covering.
  3. Taken together, points 1 and 2 mean that for most of us, this transition means that our courses will not be of the same quality as what we were delivering with our students on-site. That is OK – it really is. 

None of us likes the thought of lowering the quality or standards of our courses, but these exceptional circumstances leave us little choice. 

You must decide for yourself what is the most practical path to completion for your students given the severe restrictions we are now facing.  We recommend that you focus on what you can reasonably do in the current circumstances to help your students complete your courses within the guidelines outlined by College. 

Do not stress about what others may or may not be doing, and do not feel guilty that you are not doing enough.

Although many of you may not like the title of this article, I think the author makes some very good points and gives good and detailed advice on where your focus should be at this time: https://anygoodthing.com/2020/03/12/please-do-a-bad-job-of-putting-your-courses-online/

 

 

Leave a Reply