coe-staff: FW: University of Oregon COE Remote Teaching Tips

Fri Apr 24 12:47:50 PDT 2020

Dear Faculty and Staff,

This message was sent to our many school district partners, including 4J, Springfield, Bethel, Portland Public Schools, and Lane and Willamette ESDs, among others. Joanna, Sol, and Dane eagerly contributed their expertise. Their responsiveness provides another example of the extraordinary commitment of our faculty and staff to serving others.

With gratitude to Joanna, Sol, and Dane,

Randy

From: Education Dean <educationdean at uoregon.edu>
Date: Friday, April 24, 2020 at 12:19 PM
Subject: University of Oregon COE Remote Teaching Tips

The following message is sent on behalf of Randy Kamphaus, Ph.D, Professor and Dean of the College of Education, University of Oregon.

Dear School Partners,

We continue to think about your work as we do the same; transition to remote instruction. I suspect that you are as impressed as I am by the adaptability, creativity, and tenacity of your faculty.

Shortly after this move to remote instruction occurred, I decided to ask some of our local experts how I may help the transition. I asked our experts one question.

“What is the single most potent activity that we can engage in during this spring term to give our students a positive educational experience?”

The responses of Joanna Goode, Sommerville-Knight Professor, Sol Joye, Associate Director, Oregon Research Schools Network, and Dane Ramshaw, Chief Technical Officer, Global and On-Line Education follow. I found their advice for teachers - K-12 and higher education – insightful, practical, and reassuring. I hope that you find their advice equally useful.

Please feel free to distribute this advice to anyone you wish. A pdf copy of this email is attached for your convenience.

As always, we are grateful for your partnership.

Regards,

Randy

Joanna Goode, Sommerville-Knight Professor

Like many of my colleagues, I’m starting with a Zoom 30-minute meeting to welcome students and build community, and then the remainder of the coursework is on Canvas in which students work asynchronously, though we will be using the discussion board feature for students to share their work and ideas, and respond to one another, in small groups.  Each weekly module currently has: Welcome page – with Zoom link/recording; Journal prompt; Create Assignment task; Discussion board post; then Looking towards Next Week page.

I share this because I borrowed this particular instructional design from some of my recent research on Online PD for Computer Science Teachers. With my colleagues, we had engaged in design research with much iteration to meet online learning needs of teachers with equity as a key goal. We end this piece with some recommendations to other PD/education developers in thinking about online experiences. Some key recommendations that seem relevant now:

--Make course content and materials welcoming. The design and organization should be intuitive and should not allow for participants to get lost in the navigation. A welcome section should orient students, and expectations delivered both synchronously and in written materials are important.

--High-touch facilitation is critical for motivating learners and guiding discussions. Self-guided instruction deflates motivation of learners. The facilitation and human touch helped guide small group learning and written comments and responses to discussions online was generative for participants.

--Instructors should follow up with “missing” participants – this perhaps takes the most time but ensures retention. Sometimes people need some assistance “re-entering” a learning community if they’ve been away for a reason. Often phone calls, texts, or other non-email modes are most effective for re-connecting with missing folks.

--Collaboration is a valued and perhaps value-added feature of online learning as students can work together in a variety of mediums and asynchronously. In our national group of teachers, it also allowed educators to collaborate with others across the country that they might not have had the opportunity to interact with otherwise. Students want the opportunity to learn from and with each other.

--Teaching-focused Discourse, not Technical Jargon – Directions for navigating online learning materials should focus on typical disciplinary language and not “canned” learning system language when possible

--Online learning is iterative, especially in early design. Find ways to make sure that both technical and content updates can be made based on student feedback and teacher reflections, and acknowledge the ongoing learning of instructors and how this feedback helps us as educators (re)design courses mid-way or between courses.

With coronavirus realities, I offer these suggestions from research with a grain of salt. Now I worry about students’ ability to engage in courses for a variety of reasons: sickness, loved one’s illness, many of our students have lost their jobs, many of our students might have children or other folks at home they must care for, and many of our students are also struggling with mental health and well-being during this time. Some of our students are still working in day-care as emergency workers. UO coursework is likely not the only or primary demand on students’ time. Creating the cognitive, emotional, and physical space to engage in learning looks different this term/year and different between students. I’ve incorporated maximum flexibility in my class for engagement.

I also am keenly aware of the “digital divide” constraints in terms of access to (adequate) technology, webcam, Internet. These disparities clearly cut across SES, racial, geographical lines. If I could wish for anything in terms of technology, it would be universal high-speed Internet service. This would alleviate a lot of access problems, particularly in rural areas and in tribal communities. Again, another reason to make sure there is a “low floor” technologically for learning.

So, a super long-winded answer might be:

Provide support and acknowledge that there might be two simultaneous and intertwined approaches to teaching and learning in a particular course:

--The low-floor approach: How can we ensure that each and every student has the resources needed to engage in material asynchronously and be successful (attending to people who need accommodations might be part of this support; how can we make sure that students have required or necessary texts since there is no “reserve” at the library; how can office hours be structured; can we connect students in need with social services/foodbanks/etc.)

-The high-ceiling approach: Many of our students don’t want to “miss out” on the content they would’ve had in person. While this will be different online, how can classes take advantage of synchronous and asynchronous learning settings to support learning? Yet, I know instructors are also maxed out in terms of time and focus so this should be supportive for instructors.

I think this is the exact same problem K-12 schools are tasked with, now that they must give out credit for this term, too. My own 4th graders are starting on Zoom/Seesaw/Google Classrooms with their teachers this week, but the problem space is much larger for my 6th graders’ middle school teachers with so many preps and students.

Sol Joye, Associate Director, Oregon Research Schools Network

My thought is not a mind-blowing earth-shattering idea… I think keeping them connected to their professors and each other as much as possible and in as many authentic ways as possible is the key to ensuring that they have a positive experience this term.

I think those connections can and should be both synchronous and asynchronous when and where possible and appropriate. To do that, I would:

  *   Ensure all teaching staff temper expectations and allow for flexibility and creativity in students completing their work. Make sure all expectations are very simply and clearly laid out and communicated. It took me many years of teaching to come to the constant realization that my class, or even all of school, was never the most important thing in any given students life. I assume that notion is going to be even more true now and in the near future. Teaching staff will need to be in more of a support mode with individual students than they likely are in a normal setting.

  *   Ensure teaching staff are available throughout each week with numerous days and times for office hours. Video conferencing is ideal, but also be available by (potentially) a text-based chat, email, office phone, etc. in case students need to communicate but don’t have capacity for Zoom etc.

  *   Possibly create online spaces where students can communicate with each other in a specific class OR by program (maybe better) separate from assigned class times? So, maybe setup ongoing zoom (or other) days and times where EMPL, or FHS students, SPED etc. can connect with each other in live settings. A network hub so-to-speak. These spaces could be valuable in keeping programs connected. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to even have program staff and faculty hang out on them at certain times throughout the week to be good conduits between the program and its students in a non-academic setting.

  *   Help teaching staff create authentic assessments that ensure students feel the value of working diligently on them in these uncertain times. When those assessments can be done with classmates, even better. But, again those assessments should be as authentic as possible to ensure students feel the value of working together, which will certainly be more challenging now than in the past.

  *   Allow for students to give feedback throughout the term on what is working and what is not. Teaching staff may need to be ready to shift gears and change direction if the class is not heading down the path they want it to, and they should be willing to listen to student feedback if / when appropriate.

Dane Ramshaw, Chief Technical Officer, Global and On-Line Education

  *   Listen. Share ideas / expertise. Be flexible. Focus on learning objectives and let delivery flow from that.

  *   While the current situation has forced many people to turn rapidly to technological solutions, I feel it’s important to recognize there’s no single technology that offers a silver bullet and so we need to emphasize the human response.

  *   As such, maybe the "single most potent activity"’ would be for us to listen to the ideas, listen to the frustrations and be responsive. Both to staff as they try things out for potentially the first time, and to students who likely already live in the digital world.

  *   What I’ve been hearing a lot from educators, is a lot of emphasis on the ‘how’ (use this tool / technology, trying to replicate the classroom experience online) and getting stuck in the weeds / technological difficulties. I feel it’s more helpful to start from the ‘what’ do we want students to achieve and let the ‘how’ flow from that, involving students in the modalities and methods.

  *   I think it’s also good to remember that there will likely be many unofficial channels of communication at the COE, e.g. 'WhatsApp group for Spring 2020’. Maybe we could acknowledge these channels and potentially give them our blessing - any noise / chatter and communication is a sign of life.

Office of the Dean
College Of Education
University of Oregon
1215 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
https://education.uoregon.edu<https://education.uoregon.edu/>

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