Week 2: Canvas

All Smeal Faculty received an email from Matt Mooney describing four instructional modes for Fall. If you need help deciding which mode will be best for you, please feel free to log into one of our upcoming virtual consultations (see below) or by emailing the eLDIG team at: smeal[email protected].

Instructional Modes – Rooms Assigned

In Person Mode will still require an accommodation to be made for the students that are notable to attend the face-to-face instruction through synchronous Zoom connections or asynchronous instruction. Given the limited number of classrooms that can accommodate more than 18-20 students at a time, a number of Smeal courses would not be able to select this model. To put this into perspective, the Auditorium in the Business Building (BB110) has 150 seats but can only hold 28 students as a result of social distancing (SD) requirements, the Forum Classroom has 357 seats with a SD capacity of 64, and 100 Thomas has 726 seats with a SD capacity of 130.

Mixed Mode is recommended for courses with small enrollments such as smaller graduate-level or upper division courses. Even in the best of circumstances, most of these courses will still need to rotate a portion of the students in and out of the classroom to accommodate social distancing. Faculty will still need to make accommodations for the students that are not able to attend the face-to-face instruction.

Instructional Modes – Rooms Not Assigned

Remote Synchronous is our recommended approach for the majority of Smeal courses. From a logistical perspective, this mode provides the flexibility of synchronous instruction while still allowing for aspects of asynchronous instruction to be included. It puts both faculty and students in the same instructional environment. This allows for a faculty member to share their screen or provided a “lightboard” or whiteboard recording of examples, faculty/student interaction, real-time Q&A, and so on. I realize this still requires modification of your instructional approach compared to In-Person or Mixed Mode, but the management of some face-to-face students, some Zoom students, and some watching a recording seems a lot more labor intensive and the quality of audio (while wearing a mask) and video (a camera pointed at the podium, not the whiteboard) for the portion of students learning remotely would be a lower quality learning opportunity.

Remote Asynchronous has two major limitations. First, if you select this mode, you no longer have a scheduled class meeting time. Any synchronous instruction must be optional as students could be scheduled for another class or have other obligations (e.g., work, family, and so on) at the time you select. Additionally, this requires a fully developed online course which is much more involved than would be required for the Remote Synchronous mode.

• University Keep Learning Website
• University Announcements
• Smeal Announcements

• Canvas Basics
• Office 365 isn’t just Office Suite: Get the most out of your Office 365 subscription with a deep dive into some new features from Microsoft. Join us Wednesday, July 8 atfrom10-11AM via Zoom.

NOTE: Recordings and resources from previous sessions can be found on our eLDIG Website.

Tip #1: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel! Consider using LinkedIn Learning and other third-party videos instead of recording everything on your own.Tip #2: Check out the eLDIG Canvas courses with Lesson Templates and Teaching Tips (If you receive an access denied error, please email SmealTLT Help and we will add you to these courses):

• Smeal Academy Canvas Space
• Smeal Fall 2020 Remote Teaching Template – by Weeks
• Smeal Fall 2020 Remote Teaching Template – by Module

Ask eLDIG/RIIT – Open Consultations

Zoom Hours:

• Thursday, July 9, 1 to 3 p.m.
• Thursday, July 16, 10 to 11 a.m.
• More to be announced

Website

Check out the eLDIG website for more resources and support.

Contact Us

Email us at: [email protected] or fill out our Remote Teaching Support form.