Remote Teaching Guide

In the event of an emergency situation that causes a disruption in classroom-based course delivery, this guide provides resources and strategies for faculty to maintain instructional continuity with their students.

Preparing to Teach Remotely

As you make plans for remote teaching during an emergency, focus on the tasks you are trying to accomplish. Many face-to-face teaching and learning practices have reasonable online alternatives. Much of FPU’s teaching infrastructure is setup in cloud environments that allow you to continue teaching remotely.

Complete these initial steps in transitioning your course.

1. Access your course in Moodle (https://learning.fresno.edu/) and make it the ‘home base’ for your course content. To learn how, watch the Finding Your Courses video tutorial.
2. Create a Zoom account. Zoom is a web conferencing tool for delivering lectures, hold class discussions, share your screen, and interact with students virtually. Visit https://fresno.zoom.us/ to create your Zoom account. PDF | Securing Your Virtual Classroom
3. Create a VidGrid account. VidGrid is a video recording tool that allows for recording, editing and sharing videos and where your zoom recordings are stored. Sign up for your VidGrid account by visiting the https://www.vidgrid.com. See these instructions for getting started with VidGrid. See these instructions for getting started with VidGrid. Video | PDF
4. Review the Syllabus What will need to temporarily change?
5. Prioritize course activities and focus on delivering the ones with the most significant impact on learning outcomes.
6. Resources - Replace physical resources with digital resources where possible. Access your online library accounts and the Open Teaching Resources List.

Communicating with Students

Communicate with your students early and often. Let students know about changes or disruptions as early as possible, even if all the details aren’t in place yet. "Remember, more important than any technology is your presence and care for your students."

Here are some guidelines to help ensure you can maintain contact with your students:

• Using the Announcements tool in your Moodle course allows you to communicate directly with students to keep them up-to-date with course related information. Announcements are sent to students’ email and are archived within Moodle.
• Hold online office hours using Zoom to keep appointments with students during the campus closure.
• Consider using the appointment booking feature in Microsoft Office 365 to schedule virtual office hours with students. You can designate selected time slots for which students can sign up.
• Add a Question and Answer Forum in Moodle where students can post questions.

Presenting Content

If your plans for a canceled class include lectures or demonstrations, you can often use a recorded video to achieve the same effect. Furthermore, hearing your voice and seeing your face can help students maintain a sense of instructor presence.  

Current Practice	Online Alternatives
Instructor-led lecture	Host live class sessions in Zoom Record lectures in Zoom or Vidgrid Narrate a PowerPoint using Vidgrid
Content shared in class	Upload documents and texts via links in Moodle  Link or embed websites or videos

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Conducting Discussions and Collaborative Work

As you consider establishing interactions among students, you can build ways to increase and maintain a sense of community that will help keep students motivated to participate and learn. 

Current Practice	Online Alternative
Instructor-led mini lecture plus student driven discussions	Use Zoom to deliver “live” mini-lecture and interact with students Add video or audio content to a Moodle forum
In class group discussions	Use Zoom breakout rooms to manage small group discussions  Use Moodle forum with question prompt Making an Assignment Prompt

Collecting Assignments and Assessments

Student assignments and assessments take on various forms such as projects, papers, short talks or other types of oral presentations. These can be delivered to you and to the class in the same way that you can deliver your own lecture content to the class. 

Current Practice	Online Alternative
Papers/written assignments	Use the Moodle Assignments tool to collect student papers or other work in pdf, Word format to review and grade.
Exams	The Moodle Quiz tool supports various types of question types (e.g., multiple choice, text entry, etc.)
Student Presentations	Use Zoom for live presentations Ask students to pre-record and submit the link to their presentation. (Students all have access to Vidgrid)
Journals and Reflections	Use the Moodle Journal tool
Labs	Access free, open options for virtual labs such as Harvard’s  LabXchange  and the University of Colorado's PHET interactives. Record a video of a lab demonstration, upload it to your Vidgrid, and then copy/paste the link to it in Moodle. You can then have students analyze the lab experiment and write a lab report. It is also helpful to check with your textbook publisher
Grading Assignments	Grading in Moodle can be done at both the assignment level and the Moodle Gradebook overview level.