Supporting Instructor Absences

Suggestions for instructors to plan into courses

Here are some suggestions to help instructors keep teaching during any absences to digital or in-person teaching. If  there are no substitute teachers or other instructors who can take your class, here are some suggestions to consider:

CREATE ONE CLASS THAT CAN GO ASYNCHRONOUS
An ideal solution is to have a ‘in your back pocket’ class that can be launched fairly effortlessly in an emergency when you can’t teach – but is already to go!

  • build one class that can be launched with little effort with pre-built instructions/videos to outline student activity
  • it might be a class that isn’t in sequence that can happen at any time with a high degree of student-focused learning
  • consider independent activities for students or have them take more ownership and build something together in small groups
 
FLIP content from teacher-led  to student-directed learning
Flipped learning is all about putting the students in the driver’s seat to engage with content (listening, reading, learning) on their own first outside of the classroom – and then you use class time for applied learning, assignments, activities. It is an excellent model to flipping one class to being all about students doing the content engagement, finding content, going through content you would have presented – on their own.

  • take content that is more teacher-led and ask students to take on more of the preparation, planning and engagement
 
Build Out LMS Course with more Digital Materials for independent Student Learning
Make a plan to start enhancing your Brightspace courses with more digital materials to assist with building a more flexible course

  • take recordings and resources you created in previous years and add to your course (note: you cannot reuse Kaltura recordings as they contain private images of students and aren’t allowable to be shared with another class)
  • find new digital content and enhance your courses so you have more of a complete ‘web presence’ for all classes
  • share content with other instructors who might benefit from your resources
 
Record or enhance existing Content for Online Delivery
Put more of your live class content into short recordings either screencasting your presentations and handouts and/or narrating PowerPoint slide decks etc. Make audio or video recordings to ehance your existing content so more of it can be accessed in digital formats even if teaching it synchronously

  • capture instructions for assignments, projects and other student evaluations into short videos
  • use Kaltura Capture with direct uploading to My Media for Kaltura and embedding in courses
 
Start Working on building a flexibly designed course that can adapt now and into the future 
  • there is no better time than thinking about designing all of your courses to be more nimble and flexible for whatever the situation – now or in the future
  • think about creating ONE course that can be both synchronous digital OR in-person and then possibly some or all parts asynchronous
  • In a nutshell – a true HyFlex course that could be taught with some students joining online to the in-person class and some doing the course on their own
  • Handbook: Hybrid-Flexible Course Design: Implementing student-directed hybrid classes by Brian J. Beatty
  • Resource: Flexible Learning Resource by Ryerson University
  • Chapter: Teaching a Hybrid-Flexible Course: The Faculty Experience in HyFlex by Brian J. Beatty