Let’s Talk about Teaching 2020

Facilitators: Muhammad Awais and Trefor Bazett, Mathematics & Statistics

How can we make online videos that are as engaging as our best face-to-face lectures? In this session we will first discuss the creation of videos, focusing on the pedagogical choices and evidence-based tips for increasing engagement. Second, we will discuss the roles video can play in the larger learning process and how to structure online modules that include videos as a component.

We will discuss numerous best practices from the literature to promote engagement such as optimizing cognitive load, length and pacing, the use of storytelling techniques, and a learning objective-centric approach. We aim to leverage the opportunities of the video medium while mitigating the challenges.

Even with very engaging videos, they still need to be appropriately scaffolded in the learning process, often in online modules that contain multiple components alongside the video. We will discuss several strategies for integrating videos effectively with our other content and providing meaningful incentives and feedback to students. We will contrast the use of videos in largely asynchronous online courses, blended pedagogies such as flipped online classrooms, and even as supplements in largely synchronous online courses.

This session focuses on pedagogy, not technology, and the ideas apply regardless of the technology used. Nevertheless, resources on several methods to create videos technologically will be shared in the zoom chat. This session will be highly interactive and will adapt to the interests and ideas of participants shared in the full zoom session as well as breakout rooms.

PowerPoint – The pedagogy behind creating engaging videos

Facilitators: Natalie Frandsen, Public Health & Social Policy and Stephanie Day, Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies

During this interactive session, participants will learn how the School of Public Health and Social Policy (PHSP) took action on their commitment to decolonization and Indigenous cultural safety. Through a Learning and Teaching Support and Innovation (LTSI) grant (Indigenous stream), all PHSP undergraduate and graduate courses were reviewed to identify Indigenous perspectives, cultural safety, and practices that celebrated Indigenous ways of knowing and being while de-centering inequitable colonial knowledge structures. We hope to engage with the LTSI community to uncover greater possibilities about dynamic teaching and learning methods that foster Indigenous worldviews, ways of being, and knowing. We welcome input from attendees to deepen our understanding of this topic. We will demonstrate integration of Indigenous ways of being and knowing through online teaching methods by facilitating “talking circle” discussions. From a strengths-based perspective, participants will engage with facilitators to learn and share practical strategies to increase and celebrate Indigenous ways of knowing in their online courses. Examples of discussion topics include inclusion of Indigenous perspectives, cultural safety, flexible pedagogy, self-location exercises for instructors and students, pluralistic ways of knowing, honouring land and community, and personalization of assignments.

PowerPoint – Celebrating Indigenous ways of knowing in online courses

Indigenous Learning Methods

Facilitators:  Heather Ranson and Kerstin Heilgenberg, Gustavson School of Business

One of the big concerns of spring 2020 was how to complete student assessments, especially those in courses where in-person final exams were planned.  Many alternatives were undertaken including on-line exams, reapportioning grades across other work, open book exams, and projects substituted for final exams.  One issue that emerged across multiple faculties was cheating on final exams.  Now, with the opportunity to plan for the on-line environment, how can faculty assess students fairly and accurately and maintain academic integrity?  This session will bring together literature on academic integrity, best practices in student assessment and practical advice on maintaining academic integrity in your course.

Participants will have an opportunity to practice leading a discussion on cheating with their peers (using Zoom break out rooms) based on our “conversation starters” and will leave with a two page tip sheet including additional resources on academic integrity.

Academic integrity Lessons for assessment in an online world PowerPoint

Cheating Scenario Discussion Starters

Academic Integrity Tip Sheet

Facilitators: Sara Humphreys, Academic and Technical Writing Program and Erin E. Kelly, English and Academic and Technical Writing Program

When students are in a physical classroom space, they engage in activities they learned as part of a lifetime of educational experience, such as raising their hands to participate or working in groups. Similarly, teachers learn to gesture, make eye contact, enunciate, hover, and scan the classroom through their training and accumulated experience. These actions show that students and teachers understand the conventions of face-to-face education. We believe that these learned ways of belonging in a face-to-face classroom can be equally cultivated in online classrooms. Furthermore, we will show how to build the kinds of interactions online that we take for granted in the face-to-face classroom.

Our video and presentation builds on work by Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Technology George Veletsianos, who argues that “physical proximity isn’t a precondition for good education. Comparing one form of education to another distracts us from the fact that all forms of education can…be made better.”  Online education can be made better, explains Critical Digital Pedagogy specialist Jesse Stommel, by understanding that “online learning…builds community in different ways, demands different pedagogies, has a different economy, functions at different scales, and requires different curricular choices than does on-ground education.”  Keeping these assertions in mind, our video will be organized into three sections that cover:

• our pedagogical approach to online learning;
• our curricular choices;
• the different tools we use to build belonging and community.

After each section, the video asks participants to reflect on their own approaches. In the presentation, we will call back to these activities and ask participants to share how we all can cultivate belonging in our online classrooms.

Facilitator: Louise Chim, Psychology

In this video I will describe how we implemented experiential community engaged learning in a large (80 students) third year statistics course. PSYC 300B (Statistical Methods in Psychology II) is a required course for all psychology majors. In previous iterations, students completed research papers where they were given computer generated data to analyze. This past spring, we altered this assignment to work with a community organization (James Bay New Horizons) to apply students’ statistical knowledge to a real-world research question. Students visited with members at the centre, received, entered, and analyzed data from the organization, and then wrote up an APA-style report and created an infographic. I will discuss how we adapted an existing assignment to integrate an experiential and community engaged learning component, the adjustments we made to make it feasible in a course with 80 students, and future directions and improvements we will make in subsequent iterations. To guide the informal Q&A discussion, participants are welcome to bring their own ideas about an existing project or assignments in their course and we can discuss how they might adapt it to include an experiential learning or community engaged learning component.

Facilitators: Brian Leacock and Kate Donovan, Gustavson School of Business

In a normal cycle, the Gustavson School of Business (GSB) dispatches approximately 75% of its undergraduate students out on international exchange. This represents close to 180 fourth-year students studying overseas. With the onset of the global pandemic, international mobility (inbound/outbound) suddenly became uncertain for a majority of our students. With this need to pivot, a small team identified alternative formats for a substantial virtual international experience. Design principles included a careful consideration of new and emerging technologies for collaborating in an online/virtual format. Using this insight and our international network of partner schools, the team identified a strong international partner (Kozminski University), collaborated with the partner to align pedagogical design principles, selected core faculty, and launched a collaborative online virtual specialization in international business for fall 2020. The first cohort will include 20 UVic students and 12 Kozminski University students. As this format offers a cost-effective addition to the GSB’s internationalization strategy, it will remain relevant in a post Covid 19 era and increase access to global learning for all students.

This 60-minute concurrent session will explore the core dimensions of how GSB was able to pivot and create a new COIL partnership. As this session will occur prior to the launch of the specialization, we will explore, in a rich and dynamic discussion, on the process of establishing a collaborative online international learning platform. We will also invite insight from the attendees who have a diverse range of expertise on campus as to considerations looking forward.

This session will be of interest to administrative leaders, department heads, and faculty looking to explore alternative international partnerships to enhance international learning in a virtual context.

Special guests: Dr. Krzysztof J. Chmielewski (Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies) and Valentyna Gumińska (Director of International) from Kozminski University

PowerPoint – COIL Presentation

Facilitators: Ocean Networks Canada’s (ONC) Learning & Community Engagement team

Our world changed drastically with COVID-19. With social distancing measures, teaching, learning and this professional development opportunity moved to a virtual platform. As we navigate this time, it is critical that we consider how to honour different ways of knowing as authentically as possible. When once we would gather to hear stories and develop relationships with knowledge keepers, we now find ourselves connecting virtually. The Ocean Networks Canada Learning and Community Engagement team will open a discussion about transitioning to virtual delivery of programming, including Indigenous science concepts that have been shared with us for the purpose of educating others.

The COVID-19 pandemic enabled the Ocean Networks Canada Learning and Community Engagement team to gather best practices for online engagement according to our experiences. In April 2019, we launched a new “Learning at Home” website with activities, info videos and activity videos. As well, by hosting virtual workshops in classrooms, delivering professional development sessions online, and collaborating with Indigenous communities to begin developing new lessons, our team has learned a lot from these new experiences. The interactive portions of the presentation will demonstrate the best practices according to what we’ve discovered. We are keen to share our learning and also to learn from the workshop participants as well. Throughout the presentation, participants will be encouraged to ask questions and share their experiences.

Facilitators: Carolyn Crippen and Jessica Willows, Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies

Taking an established graduate course in leadership that commonly is described by participants as transformational and reimagining it online during a global pandemic involved a lot of reflection, exploration and creative thinking. Working as professor and teaching assistant, this presentation explores the intentional process we went through to maintain strong pedagogical elements and make the best use of the tools available to us. We will provide examples of what we found worked and what students confirmed were effective for them. Throughout the presentation we will engage with participants in discussion around topics such as: how can we maintain a flow throughout a class session using Zoom, how can we use this meeting time as efficiently and effectively as possible (in no more than 90 minutes in a session), how can we create or enhance a strong learning community through this medium, and how can asynchronous activities enhance the student learning experience?

Facilitator: Chris Willmore, Economics

So you’re teaching an online course to a bunch of intelligent, stressed and stretched-thin students. You’ve heard the stories about strictly timed online exams, and want to avoid them. What are your options? How can you keep your students engaged? How can you minimize cheating when the internet is at their fingertips? How can you get meaningful mark variation that reflects their understanding? And how can you and your TAs possibly mark it all in time, while staying fair and accurate?

I found something that worked for me this June, when I taught an out-of-major required course to 300 UVic students, and I want to share my experiences with you. I’ll show you how to design questions that students will find fun, fair and low-frustration, both for students who just want to get the course over with, and those who want a deep dive into the material. By using these techniques, many students will feel less of a need to cheat, and more of a personal connection to course content.

I’ll share marking strategies and TA tools, what worked, and what needed work, and by the end of the session you should be ready to implement this in your own courses. The tools and assessment philosophy were designed for an undergraduate ECON course, but should work for subjects from history to calculus, and class sizes from 30 to 300.

PowerPoint – Fun, Fair, Few

Facilitators: Brian Leacock, Gustavson School of Business and Viviana Pitton, Learning and Teaching Support and Innovation

The current pandemic has dramatically transformed the student experience locally and globally. While it is critical to support all students at this difficult time, international students as a group have taken a disproportionate toll during the crisis, making them particularly vulnerable. In recent months, for instance, many have returned to their home countries and since then have reported that remote working in different time zones presented significant personal and academic challenges. Moreover, many others found themselves in a position where going back home was not possible and might be experiencing precarious living situations or feeling isolated due to the pandemic and the concomitant transition to remote learning. In this session, we will explore ways to support international students who have remained in Canada and students who have returned home and are studying remotely. We will discuss both suggestions for optimizing their online learning experiences, and tips for creating a sense of community that enables them to engage in continuous and meaningful interactions with their peers and instructors.

Facilitators: Madeline Walker, Gillian Saunders, and Nancy Ami, Centre for Academic Communication

Course instructors routinely offer students written feedback on their writing, in keeping with research-informed practices. When face-to-face classes are offered, students can visit instructors during office hours or stay behind after class to ask questions or clarify expectations to enhance their understanding of the comments. However, in an online environment, opportunities for querying and clarifying instructors’ written comments are limited. Does commenting on students’ writing in a purely online environment impact the way we offer written feedback? We wonder what strategies facilitate learning when offering written comments on course assignments. Some considerations might include the format used for the comments, the content of the comments, and the style used to convey the feedback:

Formatting

• With strikethrough/additions/highlights within student text?
• In black or colored font?
• Via comments?
• On attached rubric?
• Using editing symbols/abbreviations?

Content

• Questions?
• Recommendations/suggestions?
• Corrections?

Style

• Breezy, friendly, conversational?
• Dialogic?
• Academic/professional?
• Complete sentences or words/phrases only?

During this café, attendees will be encouraged to share their favorite strategies for commenting on students’ papers to facilitate student learning. We will take notes and share a consolidated ‘best practices” handout with attendees after the workshop. By session-end, when asked, participants will outline three new (to them) strategies for offering students written feedback, drawing from the shared knowledge of café participants.

PowerPoint – Online Written Feedback

Facilitators: Tomiko Yoneda & Jim Tanaka, Psychology

How can we encourage students to engage in online classes? How can we foster a sense of community in an online classroom? As a fourth year PhD student, Tomiko Yoneda was hired to teach her first course in the summer semester of 2020. When everything moved to an online format, she discovered the advantages of online teaching without preconceptions of how teaching online may be different from face-to-face teaching. For this upper-level personality psychology course including 65 students, Tomiko implemented principles of Indigenous Learning and Teaching with the interactive features in the Zoom video conferencing platform. Based on course feedback, students indicated that they felt like Tomiko was more like a facilitator (as opposed to teaching at them), that all aspects of Zoom were used to elevate the course, and that they felt more connected to the community in this online environment than if the class had been taught in person. In her presentation, Tomiko will share concrete examples of how she applied basic theories of motivation to encourage her students to engage readily with her, with each other, and with course concepts. For the talk, Jim Tanaka, who assisted in the development of the course, will monitor the Everyone Chat, provide comments on next steps, and assist in facilitating group discussion. If you feel comfortable, please join this interactive session with your video on.

PowerPoint – Who knew

Facilitator: Janni Aragon, Technology & Society Program, 2017 Harry Hickman Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching and Educational Leadership

Good rubrics are a time-saver for instructors’ marking. A rubric also assists with consistent marking and can help students focus on the assignment’s learning objectives. Janni will speak to her rubric use for typical assignments (papers and exams), as well as rubrics for infographics, presentations, vlogs, and podcasts. Janni will present several rubrics and offer information about sites that help you easily construct a rubric. The recorded presentation will use Presentious and offer a voice-over a slide deck, which provides a link and transcript of the presentation. LTAT virtual attendees only need a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer to listen/view the presentation.

PowerPoint – Swimming with Rubrics

Grading Grid

Facilitator: Karen Courtney, Health Information Science

Deeper exploration of a topic or clarification of misconceptions can be driven by students’ questions during class, but it can be difficult to get students to engage in this way in both in-person and live online classes.  In two graduate synchronous online courses, I’ve used an adapted form of Dr. Geraldine Van Gyn’s Purposeful Reading Report (also known as the 3-2-1 Report) to have graduate students reflect on their understanding of course content at pre-defined intervals.  These reports were designed to stimulate student critical reflection on course readings originally.  The adapted student reports, which focus on several weeks of course content, generate the content for designated classes.  In this way, students customize the course content throughout the course.  This process sets a norm for student engagement and critical reflection throughout the course.

In this session, a brief view of the original report and description of the adaptation for course content will be provided.   Participants will have the opportunity to engage in a discussion of how the report could be adapted for other instructor scenarios including asynchronous online learning.  At the end of the session, participants will be able to describe the original report and different ways to adapt the report to engage students in online and in-person classrooms.

PowerPoint – Online student engagement

Facilitator: Myles A. Maillet, Psychology

The shift to online learning involves a number of changes and challenges for students when compared to traditional face-to-face methods. Asynchronous and hybrid courses tend to involve more flexibility and less structure, which can require students to be more effective in their studying, self-regulation, and time management. For these reasons, it is increasingly important for instructors to understand students’ motivation for learning, and to adopt strategies and considerations that help foster more effective forms of motivation among students.

While many instructors have strategies for motivating students, such approaches may or may not be grounded in theory and empirical research. Prominent motivational theories (e.g., self-determination theory) provide an evidence-based framework for understanding students’ motivation to study, attend classes, engage in discussions, manage stressors, and even engage in academic integrity violations. Further, several recent studies on online learning have adopted these frameworks, which provides empirical findings with direct implications for instructors.

In this 15-minute video I provide a brief overview of prominent motivational theories and their application to learning and teaching, both in online environments and traditional face-to-face methods. More importantly, I discuss several ways to apply current research in your own teaching (e.g., interacting with students, course design, and other considerations). In the 30-minute informal discussion period we will talk about the relationship between student motivation and teaching styles, and any strategies that you may have found effective in your own teaching.

PowerPoint – On perfectionists and procrastinators

Facilitators:
Mariel Miller, Director, Technology Integrated Learning (LTSI)
Novella Nicchitta, Learning Technology Assistant, Technology Integrated Learning (LTSI)
Natasja Benfaida, Learning Technology Assistant, Technology Integrated Learning (LTSI)
Joe Crowther, Learning Technology Assistant, Technology Integrated Learning (LTSI)
Monica Carbajal Uribe, Learning Technology Assistant, Technology Integrated Learning (LTSI)

Online learning and teaching brings up  many questions about how to support students to stay involved, motivated and actively learning. The LTSI Learning Technology Assistants are co-op students who have been working closely with Brightspace over the summer months.  In this session, four students will share simple tips on how they feel BrightSpace could be used to create interesting and engaging courses.

Facilitators: Valerie Irvine, Colin Madland, Curriculum & Instruction and Technology Integration and Evaluation (TIE) Research Lab, and Katy Chan (Technology-Integrated Learning)

A common critique of remote learning environments is that learners and faculty alike experience significant feelings of isolation. This may be especially acute for those who thrive in busy, social environments like face-to-face campuses. One strategy that we have found to be impactful for reducing this sense of isolation is to use decentralized synchronous learning pods where learners connect with a small group of 4 learners to discuss both course logistics and course content. This small group becomes a key source of social and academic support and peer review.

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Facilitators: Monika Smith, Academic and Technical Writing Program; Catherine Harding and Victoria Wyatt, Art History and Visual Studies; and Nancy Ami and Kaveh Tagharobi, Centre for Academic Communication

Our goal for this Conversation Café is to bring an exploratory, in-process discussion on what has been called “Pandemic Pedagogy” to the LTAT table. A key outcome of the session is to share a range of evolving questions, ideas, reflections, and information that our initial forays into online teaching and learning have so far generated. Another outcome is to map the convoluted, sometimes haphazard, “hit and miss” path we are negotiating as instructors and academic support staff, not only suddenly dislocated from our honed praxis, but propelled to quickly assemble creative, innovative ways of engaging students in the rapid and unexpected pivot to virtual classrooms.

We plan to begin our session with a brief overview (~5 mins. each) of the questions, curiosities, concerns, and aspirations that the prospect of teaching remotely has raised for each of us. Following this, we will move the session into open-ended dialogue with our similarly positioned colleagues in the audience. To facilitate this, we will invite responses, request feedback, pose questions, provide talking points, solicit ideas, and invite strategies and tips on “what works” and what doesn’t in the online classroom.

We particularly value the focus on conversation as a tacit acknowledgement that, in terms of content, none of us are (yet) experts; we have little experience in designing and delivering online courses and online support. Nevertheless, we believe that communally voicing our “in process” approach to tackling the dramatic changes in pedagogy and delivery we are tasked with is valuable because it realistically models what it means to teach, learn, support, and grow in uncertain and unsettling times.

Facilitators: Janni Aragon, Technology & Society Program, 2017 Harry Hickman Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching and Educational Leadership, and Rich McCue, Digital Scholarship Commons

Last fall Janni Aragon asked the Digital Scholarship Commons (DSC) if they could help her teach her students how to create infographics so that she could use the infographic format for one of her Political Sciences class assignments. The DSC already offered two somewhat similar workshops and were happy to collaborate with Janni to create an infographics workshop including learning goals, and then come to her classroom and lead a hands-on, skills-based workshop. The DSC instructor answered technical questions, and Janni answered assignment based queries. The feedback from students on creating infographics to explore and express their ideas for their assignment was enthusiastically positive. That same workshop was then requested and taught to four other classes at the invitation of their professors in the Spring of 2020.

The DSC offers a wide range of digital skills workshops that can be used as the basis for engaging and pedagogically sound assignments for your class. Some of the workshops include infographics, podcasting, interactive storytelling, virtual and augmented reality, data visualization, and video editing. You can see the full list of workshops that can currently be taught to your virtual class here: https://bit.ly/dsc-digital-skills  DSC staff are available for consultations on in-class workshops to make sure that the desired workshop will be a good fit with your expectations. Janni has also had her Technology & Society students attend a Wikipedia-A-Thon hosted by the DSC, which added to the WikiEducation assignments.

Join us to hear about using Infographics in your courses. We used Canva and Piktochart. Join us to hear about WikiEducation use in your courses. We hope that this conversation cafe can be a place for you as an instructor to ask questions about DSC workshops, and suggest possible new workshops that could be helpful in your teaching practice, and be the basis for new partnerships and collaborations.

LTAT_ DSC Wikieducation and Infographic_ Aragon

LTAT 2020 – How the Digital Scholarship Commons Helps Teach Digital Skills_ Infographics & Wikipedia Case Studies

Links to share: https://bit.ly/dsc-infographic and https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WfKErfsvSsA7FZGxs8YNKiWQHgcfkcoOsUYhyKtVrU8/edit

• Digital Scholarship Commons (DSC) website: https://uvic.ca/library/dsc
• DSC Email address to request a workshop, or talk about running a workshop for your class: rmccue@uvic.ca
• DSC workshops that can be run via zoom: https://bit.ly/dsc-digital-skills
• All DSC workshop lesson plans, including learning outcomes, pre-workshop videos, and workshop activities: https://oac.uvic.ca/dsc/workshops/lessonplans
• The DSC Data Visualization workshop that provides some more advance visualizations for infographic keeners in your class: http://bit.ly/dsc-datavis

Facilitators: Gillian Saunders, Emily Arvay, and Nancy Ami Centre for Academic Communication

One challenge to teaching online is navigating digital academic and study skill resources and selecting the best to link to. We may spend an inordinate amount of time searching for and reviewing resources, only to find a limited number of quality resources to share with students. We face an additional challenge in choosing resources that have not already been frequently recommended. What online resources are available that might provide scaffolded information/practice that we can use for first-year through fourth-year undergraduate students? In this conversation café, we wish to explore the question, “What are our favourite online academic writing/reading resources for students?”

Our session will offer course instructors an opportunity to share their go-to with those attending. The CAC team members look forward to sharing the “CAC Online” CourseSpaces site and a few others we frequently refer students to.  We will take notes and share a consolidated “Useful online resources” handout with attendees after the workshop. By session-end, when asked, participants will name three new (to them) online academic writing/reading resources for students, drawing from the shared knowledge of café participants.

Facilitators:  Katy Chan, Technology Integrated Learning, Kathy Sanford, Curriculum & Instruction, and Ruthanne Tobin, Curriculum & Instruction

In June of this year, four Education instructors embarked on collaboratively teaching four interrelated courses in a month-long Summer Institute, using CourseSpaces and Zoom.  Three members of the team had not taught an online course before, and all four instructors were new to teaching using Zoom.

A consultant from LTSI guided us through our many questions, as we engaged in discussions about what we were trying to accomplish (learning outcomes), ultimately adapting some familiar pedagogies, and adopting some new ones, for use within the Zoom format.

In our upcoming Let’s Talk Teaching session, we will be sharing our recent experience of learning to teach on Zoom while we navigated our way through this novel collaborative venture, learning to adapt our previous practices and course requirements.

You will get an inside view of how we were able to build trust and rapport with one another in a short amount of time—as well as with our students, and among our students.  You will see how we identified the big ideas in each of our courses, and how we designed collaborative assignments that merged CourseSpaces work with Zoom work. We will discuss how we recognized the importance of working collaboratively and collectively with each other as instructors so as to remember what the life of a student learning online would be. We worked to mitigate screen-time overload, and to enable them to find diverse ways to learn and connect.

You will also hear about some valuable lessons we learned regarding how to make breakout groups more engaging, how we handled tech glitches, and how students responded to the challenge of successfully presenting their own innovative work online.

During our interactive session, you will be invited to share—in breakout groups—how you might apply some of the things we learned to your own context for teaching.  We will wrap up with a brief Q&A session.

Panel presentation:  Valerie Irvine (Education); Thomas Froese (Engineering); Trefor Bazett (Science); & Natalie Fransden (HSD)

This panel presentation hosted by President, Jamie Cassels and Provost, Valerie Kuehne will explore strategies for creating an engaged student experience in the online classroom.  The session will be opened by the President and Provost, followed by a short presentation by each of the panelist and an open discussion forum.

President’s panel

Facilitators: Rhianna Nagel, and Alexandra Haupt, Learning and Teaching Support and Innovation, CEL Office, Bruce Ravelli, Sociology, Hong Fu, Education, Kathy Sanford, Education, Lilaine Galway, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Victoria, Lisa Mort-Putland, Volunteer Victoria

The intention of this session is for participants to assess remote community-engaged learning (CEL) options, compare how strategies can support intended learning outcomes and community endeavours, and choose potential CEL opportunities for their course(s). Session facilitators will share examples and methods for remote CEL and will work with participants to draft CEL approaches that could support their teaching (even in this remote time). Considerations will include relationships with community partner(s), course intended learning outcome(s), and delivery method(s).

Facilitator: Victoria Wyatt, Art History & Visual Studies, 2020 Harry Hickman Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching and Educational Leadership

Literature about on-line teaching often emphasizes the importance of building community among learners, yet developing strategies to do so can pose challenges. A common suggestion is to encourage discussion between participants, either through an online forum or in Zoom breakout rooms. However, in both contexts the interactions between learners take place without the instructor present; for courses on potentially sensitive and/or controversial topics, it may be essential for the instructor to moderate discussions in real time. I would like to talk about diverse approaches for encouraging a sense of community. I do not yet have experience in online teaching and cannot offer tested strategies. I seek to organize a conversation that will involve both those who, like myself, want to know more about building community among online learners, and colleagues who have some experience with effective strategies that they are willing to share.

Strategies for building community in online courses