Borders are being closed, people are\nstocking up and staying at home, and schools are moving classes online.\nEveryone has questions. Most students and instructors feel a sense of urgency,\nsome a sense of resignation, and some are in a nervous holding pattern. However\nyou slice it, things are changing and whether you feel you have a good grasp of\nhow to anticipate next stages or not, we\u2019re all vigilant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s pause for a moment and think\ncarefully of what it means to \u201cmove school online. The biggest changes are\naround communication, content, and assessment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Communication:<\/strong> How am I going to communicate these changes to students? Should I\nask for feedback? How? What if I am under an avalanche of questions that I\ncan\u2019t answer quickly enough? Should I set up some way to help students feel\nconnected to each other and to me since moving online can be alienating? How?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Content:<\/strong>\nShould content change? Or should the way it is being conveyed change? Should I\nstill expect to meet all the learning outcomes in my course? Some? Students\nstill have outstanding work and an exam to write \u2013 how can I manage that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assessment:<\/strong> How\nwill students submit work to me for grading? How should I watch and grade presentations?\nHow will students submit a portfolio project that\u2019s only halfway complete? Can\nI change the way that I weight tests, exams, and assignments? What about online\nexams and academic integrity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of these questions will be answered tactically through excellent resources posted in Keep Teaching<\/a>, including a flowchart for decision making around final assessments<\/a> and suggestions for maintaining academic integrity with online assessments<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We can also zoom out and use Universal\nDesign for Learning<\/strong> to apply design thinking principles to make sense of it\nall. More than ever, we have to be mindful of variability, both for ourselves\nand for our students. We can think about engagement, we can think about how\nwe\u2019re representing information, and how we\u2019re going to get students to show\nwhat they\u2019ve learned. We can commit to offering limited choice, and we can\ncommit to getting to get feedback with the aim of testing our decisions and\nhaving the impact we want. We can also take steps to preserve the way students\nfeel attached to us and to each other because working together will keep us\ntogether and will make the work make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Below is a list of concrete steps grounded\nin principles of UDL that you can take to support communication, content, and\nassessment decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Connect, consolidate, work deeply, be\npatient with yourself, each other, and technology. At the very least, this is a\nfast and new change for everybody. Try to remember that in crisis we are\npresented with an opportunity to experiment and feel our connectedness to our\nwork and to each other. Change will happen as baby steps in an avalanche. Always,\nand more than before, reach out. Reach to me, to Teaching and Learning, to\ntrusted peers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hold fast to effort and tighten optimism.\nGood things will follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Borders are being closed, people are stocking up and staying at home, and schools are moving classes online. Everyone has questions. Most students and instructors feel a sense of urgency, some a sense of resignation, and some are in a nervous holding pattern. However you slice it, things are changing and whether you feel you…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","iawp_total_views":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","category-universal-design-for-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":456,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions\/456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}