Remote Teaching Notes from LEARN and LTC
Campus Instructors,
We’re in the home stretch — less than two weeks of remote instruction left until finals week!
Like many of us, students are feeling some stress and anxiety about issues surrounding the pandemic, including the switch to remote learning. As we move into the end of the semester, we encourage all of you to continue to be as flexible as possible with due dates, longer time windows for quizzes and exams, and alternate formats for assessments.
Teaching Talk
In last week’s Teaching Talk, we discussed the balance between providing effective feedback and maintaining a reasonable workload, the difference between grading and assessment, and student feedback on the remote switch. If you missed the session and would like to view it, all sessions are archived on our Remote Teaching website. Don’t forget to mark your calendars for our last two “Teaching Talk” sessions scheduled for this semester:
- Friday, May 1 — Planning for the Unknown
During this session, we will work together to brainstorm ways we can plan for fall when the modality has not yet been specified. We’ll also talk about different ways you can gather meaningful feedback from students that could help your future teaching, as well as field questions that instructors would like to pose and encourage folks to share the things that are working well in their classes! - Friday, May 8 — Reflecting on the Semester
This session will focus on recapping the series this semester and reflecting as a group on what has worked for remote instruction, as well as what hasn’t worked that well. We’ll also facilitate a conversation about resources LEARN and LTC can create to help you enhance your teaching.
Both sessions will take place from 1-2 p.m. in Webex (https://uww.webex.com/meet/webern).
Quick Tips
As you near the end of the semester, here are some quick tips on giving feedback and grading:
- Consider new ways to provide feedback that will help you balance your workload a bit. This may be using voice or annotated feedback in Speedgrader for personalized feedback. If you’re seeing common mistakes among many students, providing a feedback summary to the class may also work. This could be written or a recorded video.
- As you embark on your final assessments, remember that Canvas has some tools to make your life easier! Once you create the assignment online in Canvas you can use Speedgrader to give grades and feedback, as well as interact with your student in the comments area! You can also create a rubric, connect a rubric to an assignment, and even use the rubric in Speedgrader!
- Around this time of year we usually get a ton of questions about using the gradebook. Remember, in Canvas you can exclude assignments from the final grade, give extra credit, and excuse a particular student from an assignment.
Getting Help
As always, the LTC and LEARN are here to support you!
- The LTC is available to help you transition things you may have done face-to-face to alternate delivery, as well as help you with our different technology tools that support remote teaching and learning. The LTC is available Monday–Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. via phone (262-472-1004) and email (ltc@uww.edu).
- The LEARN Center is available to discuss options and new ideas for activities or assessments via email (learn@uww.edu). You can also reach the LEARN Center via phone (262-472-5134).
Best,
Heather Pelzel (LEARN Center Director)
Nicole Weber (Director of Learning Technology)