Fall 2020/Spring 2021 Faculty Resources
This page provides information for faculty in preparation for the Fall 2020 semester.
Documents and Forms:
- Fall 2020 Syllabus Template
- Instructor Checklist for Fall 2020 Classes
- Classroom Safety Protocols
- Classroom Signage and Safety Materials
- Teaching Laboratory and Design Course Safety Form
NMT Workshops/Meetings:
- Every other Wednesday, 12:00 - 12:45 pm, Teaching Teatime. An opportunity for Tech faculty to share ideas and best practices. Scheduled dates and Zoom link can be found on the Academic Affairs calendar.
Recordings of past workshops
- Video of Flower Darby's workshop "Online Teaching Basics" (from April 2020). The sound is a bit choppy at first, but becomes much better when she turns her video feed off.
- Videos of Zelijka Fuchs, Jolante van Wijk, and Preston Webster, Best practices in asynchronous course design (from June 24, 2020). The videos and other materials from this workshop are in this Google Drive folder. To get oriented read the "Open First" Word document.
- Video of Anthony Lenox's Teaching Teatime training for Zoom Rooms (from July 29). The content begins at 5:10.
- Video of Yael Grushka-Cockayne's Keynote Workshop "Designing a Curriculum for online and Hybrid Classes" (from August 10). Here are the PowerPoint slides from her presentation.
We plan to have additional workshops on a variety of topics this summer and continuing into the fall semester.
Other Workshops/Meetings/Classes:
- Resilient Teaching Through Times of Crisis and Change. A free online course (MOOC) for university instructors offered by the University of Michigan. This course provides background on various approaches to teaching hybrid and online courses and then involves the participant in a redesign of one of their courses. Completing it will require an investment of about 25-30 hours of your time, so it's a substantial effort."
- Muhlenberg College's Camp Design Online isaminicourse that will take you through the process of backward design starting
from course level learning objectives to planning learning activities and assessments.
It explains the "Community of Inquiry" model of social, cognitive, and teaching presence
and best practices to be used in creating such a community of inquiry. You can read
through the course materials in about an hour although you may want to invest more
time to dig deeper into the material.
Other Resources:
- EAB has a very good (short and sweet!) Remote Instruction Resource Center. NMT is a partner university, so Tech faculty can obtain free accounts to access the material.
- Active Learning in Hybrid and Physically Distanced Classrooms by Derek Bruff at Vanderbilt University. This page discusses how to use Zoom in a synchronous hybrid or online class for active learning, including class discussions, back channel discussions in the chat, polling, group work, etc. This is directly applicable to synchronous online classes on Zoom. For hybrid face-to-face/online classes, the assumption is that students will bring their devices with them to class and login to zoom so that they can participate in the same ways.
- How Best to Conduct Small Classes with Discussion Using Zoom by Funmi Amobi at Oregon State University. This PowerPoint discusses how to go beyond lecturing to interactive discussions in synchronous online Zoom classes but would also be applicable to hybrid classes. Lots of practical tips as well as discussion of more theoretical ideas such as the difference between social, teaching, and cognitive presence (you should be concerned with all 3!)
- NMSU's Teaching Online Mini-Video Series. Short videos focused on a variety of aspects of online instruction.
- Merlot Resources By Discipline: Provides templates and guides for developing online content in a variety of disciplines. Search engine directs you to specific subjects within disciplines.
- Colorado School of Mines: Simulations and Labs for online instruction. Open educational resources with instructions for simulations and virtual labs for science, engineering, and math disciplines.
- Montana Tech Distance Learning Faculty Resources. Best practices for promoting academic integrity and reducing cheating in online courses. Quick read.
- Educause: 10 Biggest Myths about Synchronous Online Teaching. Article debunking the top 10 myths about synchronous online teaching and suggested ways to improve how you plan and deliver an online course. Brief podcasts discuss each myth. 15 min read.
- Checklist for Online Instructors – UW Stout. A quick reminder of the stages for planning and delivery of online courses that can be helpful for new faculty.
- Best Practices and Expectations for Online Teaching – Purdue Univ. Provides a roadmap for developing and conducting an online course with expectations for instructors. 10 min read.
- An annotated list of resources from Rob Hepler.
- Delivering High-Quality Instruction Online in Response to COVID-19 (Faculty Playbook), from the Online Learning Consortium.
Technology:
ACT's Online Faculty Resources page includes instructions on how to use most of the technology used at Tech for distance delivery.
Most of our hybrid classes will be taught using Zoom Rooms, which is slightly different from traditional Zoom. Here's a handy Quick Start Guide from Anthony Lenox.