Post an announcement in Canvas as soon as possible to inform students about how the course will continue to be delivered, how additional communications about changes will be communicated, and what your expectations are regarding how often they should be checking Canvas. See this guide on how to add announcements to your course: Adding an Announcement in Canvas  and how to use the Inbox as an instructor.

A sample communication to students within the first 24 hours of the campus disruption:

Consider how you will prepare several sessions of course content, including assignments and assessments, which could be delivered via Canvas even if your course is scheduled to be taught face-to-face.  Every credit class has already been using Canvas for posting syllabi and sharing the gradebook, so we have a strong start.

Here are the recommended tools and approaches for delivering course content during a remote-teaching period using Canvas, Zoom and other systems:

• Live and/or recorded Zoom sessions for up to 300 attendees

• Take advantage of your usual course time slot and post a Zoom meeting link in your Canvas site to help students join

• Or use the Canvas Rich Text Editor recorder built in to your Canvas course.
• Or, use Canvas tools to post content and links (e.g., readings, YouTube videos, etc.)
• Is your content accessible to all students?  Use Ally to help improve accessibility: https://help.blackboard.com/Ally/Ally_for_LMS/Instructor/Quick_Start

Special considerations

• Labs: Would it be possible to put part of the work online or reschedule the lab when campus facilities are again available?
• Other tools that require paid student accounts or additional faculty setup should only be used if they are already part of the course

• Identify expectations for students

  Consider some of your expectations for students, including participation, communication, and deadlines. Keep in mind the impact this situation may have on students’ abilities to meet those expectations, including illness, lacking power or internet connections, or needing to care for family members. Be ready to equitably handle requests for extensions or accommodations. Syllabi and course activities including graded work may need to be adjusted after the start of the term based on changing circumstances due to COVID-19.

In order to maintain substantive interaction with your students during a remote-teaching period, you should do this via the Canvas discussion board and/or Zoom.

Instructor-to-student interaction

• Canvas announcements
• Canvas messages
• Zoom office hours/help sessions

Student-to-student interaction

• Discussion boards

• For large classes and/or classes with small group work, consider setting up Canvas Groups and setting discussions to use those groups
• If delivering session live via Zoom, students can interact in chat or ask questions
• Students can set up their own Zoom meetings outside of Canvas

Deliver assessments and collect student submissions. Below are some possible options.

• Set up Canvas assignments to collect work — collecting assignments via email or other methods is not recommended, due to data security concerns
• Canvas quizzes
• High-stakes assessments will be challenging

• Consider rescheduling if midterms are interrupted

• Consider an alternative, non-multiple-choice exam assessment where students solve a problem and show work/justification of answers, then submit as a regular Canvas assignment

If you have taught online courses  previously, you may use some of those existing, already-developed online resources to aid in the delivery of your campus courses being taught remotely. Follow directions for copying content from one section to another.

Scheduling

• Holding synchronous class meetings, such as via Zoom, at a time and day the class is not scheduled to meet
• Extending class beyond the time the class usually meets

• Adding a class session during finals week
• Extending the course so that it ends after finals week
• Rescheduling finals

Workload

• Increasing the amount of work students are expected to do

• Asking students to do the same amount and kind of work the syllabus initially expected them to do while (a) compressing the work into a shorter time period and/or (b) reducing their access to instructor, peer or campus resources; if you have more content than time, reflect on the student learning outcomes for your course and focus on those that are the most important
• Teaching via individual consultation and tutorial unless you were going to do that anyway, such as office hour and normal individual email communications

Technology

• Outside of Canvas and Zoom, using additional technologies or tools you normally don’t use in the course, which may impair your students due to inaccessibility or additional costs.

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