***under construction***

[DRAFT]

Preface: Teaching in summer typically requires us to rethink and retool how we approach our courses because of the condensed formats of the Summer Sessions. In Summer 2020, this unavoidable re-visioning of our pedagogies is further compounded by the University’s decision to move all classes online. We might feel comfortable managing some of these factors individually – e.g. online teaching, condensed courses, writing intensive curricula – but for many of us it will be the first time tackling these factors all at once.

Starting Right! 

• • welcome video
  • setting clear – yet flexible if needed – expectations
    • Strive for a consistent weekly and daily rhythm
  • pedagogies of transparency and kindness
    • Be super supportive! 
    • Build explicit (mental and movement) breaks into classes – even asynchronous ones!

Class Management 

• • synchronous principles and practices
    • In synchronous lessons, aim to interact with students (or student with each other) every 15 minutes
    • Create a few standing Meets for group work and have them posted in the Stream.
  • asynchronous principles and practices
    • Use Screencast-o-matic for easy recording (of both yourself and your screen)
    • Use FlipGrid to share a poem.
    • Use FlipGrid for peer feedback or even instructor
    • Place questions (or Easter eggs) in text lectures or recorded mini-lectures to surprise students and foster response to the material.
    • Post initially in BB and email via Blackboard
    • Invite students to Classroom or add them manually by typing in their names
  • lesson planning/outlining
    • Mini-lectures on core concepts – one concept per video
    • Modeling reading – with your own thoughts, curiosities, connection-making, challenges
    • Create opportunities for fun, low-stakes engagement (that does not have to explicitly be about course material) e.g. one fun thing I watched/heard this week? OR: One new totally unhelpful “skill” I mastered/learned during the pandemic? OR: FlipGrid with film/book recommendations OR daily song with link/video
    • Consider using one class day each week – or section of a class each day – as a Q&A about readings. That’s the entire point of the class: to ask and answer questions about the reading. You might even want to read a particular significant excerpt and model for your students how you close read and think through or interrogate the piece.
    • Resources e.g. QC Voices
  • the conference hour: 4 approaches
    • mandatory check-in
    • synchronous small group work
    • synchronous one-on-one time
    • asynchronous peer feedback

Assignment Flexibility

• • Challenges of summer/online teaching
    • Be cautious of bleed between types of work, e.g., homework and asynchronous class work.
    • Clearly distinguish for students between class work (even/especially when asynchronous) and homework. Otherwise these things bleed into each other in ways that might feel like overload for students.
    • Tell students how long a task should take (estimate)
  • opportunities afforded by summer/online teaching
  • examples of acceptable modification of assignments
    • Multimodal, public writing/texts
    • Work-along worksheets
    • Student video responses
    • Compounded assignments, e.g., Essays 1 and 2 become sections of Essays 3. Questions from previous essays are explored in the final portfolio.
    • Frequent low-stakes assessments, e.g., real-time polling for synchronous lessons. These can be quite simple but open up for complex discussion
    • Photo accountability e.g. students take pictures of lecture notes or text annotations and turn it in.
    • Public-facing, multimedia student projects 
    • Collaborative annotation of texts
    • Group work approaches: Slack channels for pre-set student groups; Google Docs for pre-set student groups.
    • Zero drafts on Google Forms

Grading and Evaluation

• • portfolio grading
  • contract grading
  • traditional grading
  • quizzes
  • Explicit rubrics, e.g., cell rubrics can be easily generated in Google Classroom