{"id":489,"date":"2020-05-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-07T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/?p=489"},"modified":"2020-05-08T10:41:50","modified_gmt":"2020-05-08T18:41:50","slug":"online-teaching-with-the-most-basic-of-tools-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/online-teaching-with-the-most-basic-of-tools-email\/","title":{"rendered":"Online Teaching with the most basic of tools \u2013 email"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This blog post was originally written by Dr. Tannis Morgan, Advisor, Teaching and Learning and Researcher, Open Education Practices at BCcampus<\/a>. We would like to thank Dr. Morgan for allowing us to repost her blog. You can find her other posts and work on her website: https:\/\/homonym.ca\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Link to original post<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Photo of retro rotary dial phone in teal
Image source: https:\/\/www.netclipart.com\/isee\/TJRmmJ_old-phone-png-blue-rotary-phone-transparent\/ <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

How to teach online using only email and a phone and maybe one other tool<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s been a lot of a great resources being shared by so many of us\n who want to help with the move-online-quickly situation that COVID has \nfound us in. I don\u2019t link to any of it here but I want to acknowledge \nthis great work and generous sharing of it. This is my small \ncontribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The great thing about moving online because of COVID is that it\u2019s the\n middle of the semester so students already know your flow. You just \nneed to translate that flow to online. There are lots of ways to do \nthis, but there isn\u2019t a lot of time to learn a lot of tools and \ntranslate the use of those into good teaching. Also, access to some of \nthese tools isn\u2019t ubiquitous\u2026for example not every student has reliable \nhigh speed internet access to participate in video conferencing sessions\n or the conditions to do so. Students are parents, caregivers, \nemployees and being stuck at home while schools or workplaces are closed\n means a greater need for flexibility. Faculty who have never taught \nonline before or tend to emphasize the f2f experience over technology \nmay not have the skills or the headspace right now too learn some new \ntools. So I\u2019d like to challenge us to think about the lowest common \ndenominator and imagine online teaching with two things that most \neveryone will know how to use: email and a smartphone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of online teaching is really about communicating clearly and \nwell (even if it feels like you are stating the obvious) and \nestablishing and managing expectations. The good news is that you can \ndo most of that by email. Early online teaching was focussed on good \norganization and structure, because there simply weren\u2019t a lot of tech \noptions to distract us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its most basic, online teaching is about 3 things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Student \u2013 content: <\/strong> How will you get content to students in the easiest and most accessible way? How will students engage with that content?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instructor-student interaction:<\/strong> How will you as an instructor feasibly communicate with your students? And how will they communicate with you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Student-student interaction:<\/strong> How will students communicate with each other and work together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For starters, maintain the flow you already have established. You \nwill need to remind students what that flow is: readings by Friday, \nsummaries by Monday, etc. For example, if you teach on Tuesdays, start\n your week with a communication email on Tuesdays. Tell students where \nthe content for that week is, what needs to be accomplished, and how you\n will do that as a class. Students might have questions about how \neverything will play out over the remaining weeks, and you might not \nhave all the answers but you can be honest about that and invite \nsuggestions. (A great place to collect those, outside of your email, is a\n shared document like a Google doc, but make sure that editing \npermissions are on and students don\u2019t have to sign in to Google to use \nit).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some scenarios that I think some instructors will identify with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 1: Content is everything in my course. I use \npowerpoints, worksheets, pdfs, you name it. 50% of more of my class \ninvolves students working with my materials.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this case you will need to get content to students. At the most \nbasic level you can do this via email. I\u2019d avoid dumping the entire set \nof course materials in one email and opt for a subject line that clearly\n indicates that the email is only about Week 8 course materials and \nattach only Week 8 materials in that email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have permission to use a shareable folder (e.g. a Google \nDrive, or Dropbox) you can use this as a container for your stuff and \nshare the link with your students. Again, the key here is to organize \nit well: You can have a folder for each week, and label the folder and \nthe content well \u2013 Week 8 course materials<\/em>, Week 8 powerpoint presentation<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For student to student interaction \u2013 put students in groups of 4-5 \nand assign them an identifier. These will be their peer support group. \nTheir first task is to establish some group guidelines: what tool will \nthey use to communicate with each other, how often will they do that, \nand who will assume the coordination of the group. You want students to\n solve their problems in a group first before emailing you in order to \nmake emails to you more manageable. Anything they can\u2019t figure out in \ntheir groups they surface to you via the group coordinator. Tell them to\n use a specific subject line so your email can be easily sorted eg. \nWeek 8 Questions \u2013 Group Number. (Alternatively, you can create a \nshared document that students can add their comments and questions to, \nand invite students to answer each other\u2019s questions or challenges. ) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, how do you deal with these questions coming at you via email? \nTell them their questions\/muddiest points have to be in by a certain \nday, then compile all of the class group questions into one doc and \nrespond. This doc could be called Week 8 Question responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s a lot of work typing up all those responses<\/em>. \nTurn on voice to text or dictation. (You can do this in Microsoft Word \non a Mac under the Edit button). You will have to do some text clean up \nbut it\u2019s a good way to save some time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Text seems so impersonal. <\/em>You can record audio responses and\n share them in your shared folder. Emailing them might be too big, but \nif you keep them short and concise, that might work as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 2: The heart of my teaching are discussions. I \nrun my class as a seminar, and students also do a lot of group \ndiscussions and group work. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where a bulletin board really shines. If your institution has\n an LMS, it will have a bulletin board and entire online classes have \nbeen taught using only the bulletin board. But if we are sticking to \nemail and your class size is in the 20 or less range, you will want to \nstructure the discussion around a key question or two per week and ask \neveryone to reply in that email thread. Designate a student or group to\n summarize the discussion or part of the discussion at the end of the \nweek and post to everyone. Rotate that role. Consider doing your own \nwrap up email (Subject Line: Week 8 \u2013 Wrap Up) to capture any topics \nthat didn\u2019t get addressed or need further exploration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scenario 3: The heart of my teaching is group work. I facilitate and support my students in their group work process. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presumably since it\u2019s mid semester students are already in groups \ndoing their thing. How to take the facilitation of this to email? I\u2019m \ngoing to steal an idea from Lauri Prange<\/a>\n and suggest adopting a Sprint\/Kanban board structure. Replace each \nclass with a check in, where student groups communicate with you about \nwhat is on the To Do, the Doing, and the Done boards. They surface any \nsticky problems that you can respond to. The subject line could be Week 8 Group 5 Check in<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Telephone might be the best way to do this but might not be as \nflexible for students. You can have a group call or have the group \ncoordinator call you at a designated meeting time to do the check in. <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Beyond Email<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Beyond email and a smartphone there are some other options that can \nbe combined. I personally feel like you could teach an entire course \nusing only Mattermost (an open source Slack tool) and if you are in BC \npost-secondary you can have access to this tool for free via the OpenETC<\/a>. The OpenETC community has already created some great resources for Mattermost<\/a>. Alternatively a combination of a WordPress SPLOT site<\/a>\n (also available for the BC post secs at OpenETC) for content and \nMattermost for communication is a good way to go if you feel ready to go\n beyond email. Some OpenETC community members have already taught with \nthis combo with great results, so it\u2019s been tried and tested. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really need to do a separate post on teaching and learning with OpenETC tools<\/em>. SPLOTS\n offer the most potential here to instructors who are just dipping their\n toes into online teaching and digital tools, but want to create media \nand content rich learning environments easily and quickly. And there\u2019s \n a lot to say about collection of OpenETC sites that can be cloned with a\n click of a button\u2026 eg. see something you like that you want to use for \nyour class\u2026click and voila. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog post was originally written by Dr. Tannis Morgan, Advisor, Teaching and Learning and Researcher, Open Education Practices at BCcampus. We would like to thank Dr. Morgan for allowing us to repost her blog. You can find her other posts and work on her website: https:\/\/homonym.ca\/ Link to original post How to teach online using…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":10,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[93,75,126,125,103,101,99,100,122,124,95,91,37,121,123,45,44,97,92,53,96,98,90,94,109,116,111,110,120,114,113,79,119,107,74,118,108,115,117,105,112,104,106,102,127],"class_list":["post-489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning-design","category-technology","tag-2-minute-tools","tag-access","tag-activity-theory","tag-applied-learning","tag-autonomy","tag-book-review","tag-boundary-objects","tag-conferences","tag-connectivism","tag-creative-commons","tag-digital-natives","tag-distance-education","tag-ed-tech","tag-elearning","tag-gender","tag-higher-ed","tag-higher-education","tag-iadis","tag-in-review","tag-indigenization","tag-innovation","tag-instructional-design","tag-language","tag-lms","tag-micro-learning","tag-mlearning","tag-mobile-learning","tag-oep","tag-oer","tag-oer17","tag-oers","tag-online-learning","tag-open","tag-open-access","tag-open-education","tag-open-education-resources","tag-open-learning","tag-open-models","tag-open-pedagogy","tag-open-source","tag-practices","tag-research","tag-strategy","tag-visualisation-tools","tag-week-in-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":502,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions\/502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.wordpress.kpu.ca\/tlcommons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}