Many things - big and small - can affect the ability to teach your course as planned. These disruptions don’t have to derail your teaching. UCSB has tools and support. The Office of Teaching & Learning has a document with resources on providing sustained academic support for undergraduate student learning. We're also available for one-on-one consultations.
Emergency Remote Instruction
If you suddenly need to teach remotely:
- Message your class via the Canvas Inbox or post an announcement with your plan.*
- Send out a Zoom link for the meeting. (Limited to 300. Larger classes need a webinar license).
- Alternatively, record a lecture on GauchoCast (Panopto).
*If you don’t yet have a Canvas site for your course, you can create it or contact the help desk for fast support.
Instructional Technology Outages
Technologies that you rely on for your teaching may become unavailable at any point, disrupting your plans for instruction.
When designing activities or assessments that utilize instructional technologies such as Canvas, Gradescope, or Zoom, think about what you would do if the application is suddenly unavailable.
As always, timely communication with your students is critical. You can access a class email list via e-Grades by downloading the class roster. Send the class a message (use bcc so no one can reply to all) informing them of any changes or the new plans for your instructional activity.
If Canvas is unavailable, this page has a list of common activities and some alternatives that you can utilize.
Resilient Pedagogy
Before you rush into a new plan, consider ways to design your course that allow you to manage disruptions easily.
Disruptions are jarring, and managing them is your priority. The pandemic forced us into what we came to call emergency remote instruction, unlike optimal online structure and pedagogy.
The pandemic also spurred thinking around better ways to prepare instruction for disruption. Rather than try to replicate the classroom on Zoom, consider how you might rework some of your content to be delivery mode-agnostic.
Build a mix of assessments and activities that can be done asynchronously or synchronously online. You can then pivot and use flexible pedagogy to continue teaching.
The “Plus-One” Approach.
Tobin and Behling (2018) advocate that “...instructors should incrementally and systematically add content, assignments, and assessments in alternative formats to their repertoire of course resources.” Over time, you’ll compile resources that can be delivered in any modality.
To use the lemonade analogy, a teaching disruption can be a time to ask, “...what previously untouched skill sets, approaches, or platforms could I consider integrating into my pedagogy?” (Bowen, 2021)
It’s not if teaching disruptions will happen; it’s when. Be ready with flexible course design and practices.
Examples of resilient pedagogy:
- Conduct a “<discipline> minute.” Students submit news stories related to course outcomes. Use the peer review feature in Canvas to assign recorded or typed reviews. Discussion forums can also be used.
- Pull questions from a quiz bank for students to submit before class. Discuss results via a Zoom meeting and clarify misunderstandings of content.
- Use an active learning strategy and have students complete a video assignment in GauchoCast.
Additional resources:
Resilient Pedagogy: Practical Teaching Strategies to Overcome Distance, Disruption, and Distraction - This open text covers many strategies from scholars at the Empower Teaching Open Access Book Series from Utah State
Tobin, T. J., & Behling, K. T. (2018). Reach everyone, teach everyone: Universal design for learning in higher education. West Virginia University Press.