Preparing for Fall 2020 at FPU

The Center for Online Learning is making available a number of resources, services, and opportunities to help support faculty prepare for the Fall Semester.

The Scenarios for Fall 2020

Many faculty will be teaching in a new or modified modality this fall due to COVID-19. Whether you will be teaching in-person courses with a remote student audience, blended or online courses, this fall will require some form of modified teaching.

Our support approach consists of the following areas outlined below. We hope that the resources and services will be useful in preparing your courses as you look ahead to the start of Fall. We can make the most of this challenging situation if we approach our teaching this year with creativity, commitment, and collaboration.

Please visit this page often as additional programming and resources will be added regularly. In addition to the programming listed, you can always see upcoming events on the COL Events page.

Faculty Professional Development Stipend Program [Application Deadline: August 21, 2020]

Professional Development stipends are available through the Center for Online Learning designed to support faculty in adapting their face-to-face courses for a fully-virtual delivery in Fall 2020. Stipends are intended to compensate faculty for participating in pedagogical and technological training in support of adapting their courses (for example planning for synchronous teaching, setting up a Moodle course shell conducive to online course delivery).

Based on the regulations governing the utilization of CARES Act funds, these stipends are available to faculty who have had to modify their normal face-to-face course(s) to accommodate online delivery in Fall 2020 due to the COVID-19 situation. Faculty who will be converting a face-to-face or blended course to fully online are encouraged to apply for the stipend, but priority will be given to faculty adapting a fully face-to-face course for online delivery.

A maximum stipend of $1,500 will be available to full-time and part-time faculty who meet program expectations. Stipends will be awarded to faculty who participate in designated professional activities and successfully complete program activities. (Note: Stipends are taxable income and subject to other payroll deductions). The professional development program activities currently eligible for a stipend include:

Course Development Academy ($1,200)
Intro to Teaching Online Workshop ($300)
Webinars - Online Essentials Series ($100/webinar - up to 4 webinars eligible for stipends)

Apply

Stipend Application Deadline is August 21st, 2020.

Additional Webinars (eligible for stipends)

The following webinars are also eligible for stipends (this list may be updated).

Quick-Start Your Course for Fall
using VidGrid to Create Interactive Videos
Online Assignments and Grading in Moodle

Course Development Academy

The academy is a three-week online experience intended to help participants gain the knowledge and experience needed to develop their course. This academy focuses on practices and principles for designing and building courses that can be adapted to hybrid, fully online, or face-to-face learning environments. This course is a combination of asynchronous and synchronous elements. The Academy is offered fully online in Moodle where participants engage with online activities and resources designed to support development of their own course(s). Throughout the academy participants build elements of their own courses in Moodle - preparing for teaching in a virtual environment. Participants join a learning cohort and meet weekly via Zoom to work through a series of Moodle modules.

Introduction to Online/Blended Teaching (Workshop)

Are you looking for ideas and teaching strategies for how to engage students this fall? How to manage your class during synchronous meetings or interact with students? This workshop will introduce participants to asynchronous and synchronous activities they can use in their courses. The workshop consists of two components:

An asynchronous online component, presented in Moodle, that provides key principles of how to engage students in online or blended teaching
A synchronous component, facilitated via Zoom, that introduces examples and strategies for engaging students in an online or blended course

The online asynchronous component will take 2-3 hours and is essential preparation for the 1.5 hour synchronous workshop.

Course Demo Showcase (Webinar)

Interested in seeing how other FPU faculty have designed their courses? The Course Demo Showcase series provides you with a sneak peek at what your colleagues are doing in their courses. During the course demo tour, you will be able to observe features such as course layout, organization, activity and content types, sequencing of topics, and ways in which faculty have designed for communication with students.

To observe a colleague’s Moodle course, sign up for one or more of the options listed on the Course Demo Showcase registration site. Visitors will be registered as guests in the selected course and thus able to log in and view the course organization and content. (Note that no student information will be visible to visitors.) Some faculty hosts have also offered to discuss their course design choices via Zoom. Be inspired by your colleagues and let us know if you would like to make one of your courses available as a Course Demo by sending an email to col@fresno.edu.

Moodle Course Template Workshop (Webinar)

The Center for Online Learning has developed Moodle course templates to help kick-start course development. If you need to fast-track the development of your course in Moodle, take advantage of these templates to save time.

The following are some features available in the templates:

Assignment Templates with instructions that you can simply adapt and “duplicate” in your course
A course header section for your syllabus and announcement area to communicate with students
Examples of activities you can modify to fit your course
Placeholders for content presentation

If you are interested in learning more about the template to see if it might work for you, you can sign up for a one-hour workshop or watch a recorded webinar. You can also preview a template in Moodle.