How can I support student learning without overextending myself? 

Three strategies we recommend for all classes this term include:  

1. Designing your Canvas site to be easily navigable and to orient students to your course 
2. Using some mechanism to capture class content (centralized note-taking, recording, or hyfliex) for each class period, and 
3. Considering flexible timelines (some options require little, if any, additional instructor effort). 

1. Designing your Canvas site to be easily navigable and to orient students 

Having an organized Canvas site that students can navigate effectively is one of the most important practices UO students have identified to support their learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. As Canvas use is required for all undergraduate courses with five or more students, we recommend optimizing Canvas use for easy navigation and an orienting “welcome.” 

Providing a clear path to navigate Canvas allows your students to find and access the materials and platforms you will be using. Students have reported difficulty orienting to the variety of platforms, external resources, and organizational structures used in the different courses they take. Providing a clear, consistent organizational structure will help your students devote more of their cognitive energy to your course content and less to finding materials and identifying out the plan for the week. 

Using modules, consistent naming conventions, and “stable wayfinders” are all crucial ways to make a well-organized and navigable course in Canvas. Get a brief overview of designing with modules and recommended structure for modules from this great Canvas resource from UO Online. Learn more about using modules, naming conventions, and “stable wayfinders” from this resource by TEP and UO Online.  

Welcome modules are a “place” in your Canvas course where you orient students to the course and its academic content, how it is organized, and the technology you will use. You can use the welcome module to start the process of building community in the class. Find an overview of welcome modules on this resource page, where you will also find a link to a module you can import and modify for your own course. 

In addition to everything noted above, these practices also make it easier to communicate contingency plans and essential changes to the course. They also tend to decrease the number of questions instructors receive and would otherwise need to respond to. 

2. Capturing and sharing class content 

Academic Council requires all instructors to ensure “equitable access to course content” given our COVID context: this means preparing for the eventuality of students getting sick and/or needing to quarantine.  

The Council states that “Instructors are not required to add recording or streaming to all in-person classes to accommodate absent students, however 175 general pool and joint-control classrooms have been upgraded to make recording and streaming of in-person class sessions easier.” 

Several ways the Council notes that instructors can increase access include: 

• Recording class sessions using Zoom, Panopto, or another program you are comfortable with
• Allow remote access to live class sessions through Zoom (see instructions for setting up a “hyflex” classroom)  
• Providing access to course materials such as slides and notes 
• Asking for volunteers from class to post their notes to Canvas and/or to connect with students who have had to miss 

Recording video or audio and providing materials benefits all students. Students who were present can revisit these resources to increase their learning, and students who were absent can access these resources to catch up and continue the term. A significant number of students will need to be able to record or have access to recordings as an AEC accommodation, so there are benefits for the instructor to plan for this ahead of time when possible.  

Straightforward ways to capture class content (through notes, video and/or audio, or streaming) include:  

• Having students take and share notes in a central location in Canvas. Support note sharing through making designated space and structure for student notes in Canvas. Students might rotate who takes notes (having groups of notetakers may be more useful than just one), or the full class might collaborate. This activity could be factored into participation points, extra credit, or a lower-stakes assignment. One example of how you might describe this to students in your syllabus is below: 

Capturing what happens during our live meetings is a way to take care of one another in our COVID context and help all students deepen learning. We will make a record of class content so that students who must miss will have a resource to refer to, and students who attended will have a resource to go back to and strengthen their learning. I will need your help doing this. You will find a shared document for notes in each Canvas module, and will distribute the work of taking notes for class sessions. This is an opportunity to solidify learning, surface questions, and support your peers! 

• Using Zoom—or Panopto, or whatever recording application you are most comfortable with—to record audio and visual (or just audio). Find guidance for recording classes here, If there are parts of the course (such as small group conversations) you and your students do not wish to record, you can enlist students to help with reminders to stop/start recording.  
  
  We encourage you to think about recording as especially useful on days that have more substantive lecture components, and where the video is primarily concerned with capturing visuals necessary to understanding content (such as an equation you are writing, slides, or a lab demonstration). These would not be “produced” recordings—they are capturing content with the least amount of additional time required from instructors. An example of how you might describe this to students is: 

Capturing what happens during our live meetings is a way to take care of one another in our COVID context and help all students deepen learning. We will make a record of class content so that students who must miss will have a resource to refer to, and students who attended will have a resource to go back to and strengthen their learning. I will strive to record the parts of our class sessions where I am primarily sharing information, and where as a class we are applying it, and will post those recordings in weekly Canvas modules.  
 
As recording our time together can sometimes change how students feel about participation, I will let you know when we are recording. Federal privacy law (FERPA) restricts the sharing of recordings that identify students beyond this class. Please note that recording or sharing the recordings I make without written permission from me is also a violation of the Student Conduct Code. 

• Provide a HyFlex option for students who cannot attend in person, but who are able to tune in remotely. You can find guidance on our HyFlex Teaching Practices and Tips page.

3. Using and communicating flexible deadlines 

Many instructors experimented with flexible deadlines over the last several terms, and many students named this practice as supportive to their learning. “Flexible” here does not mean “open-ended,” as deadlines provide support for learning. 

Flexible deadlines can be challenging in classes that are tightly scaffolded, or that center group work. Choose what works for your context (if you’d like support selecting options, please contact TEP for a consultation). Options faculty have used to make deadlines flexible include: 

• Setting “best-by dates” or “soft deadlines”—deadlines which encourage submission by a given date to support student workflow, but where late work is not penalized. Some instructors will put parameters around this, such as having an activity due in a particular week (instead of day), or making continuing to the next activity contingent on completion of the prior one. Soft deadlines work particularly well with assignments that students can be intrinsically motivated to engage with. 
• Giving each student a fixed number of “oops” tokens at the beginning of the term that can be used as no-questions-asked passes for late assignments or missed attendance. For students with the AEC accommodation of “flexibility with deadlines,” this practice would be in addition to the accommodation.  
• Letting students know at the beginning of the term that you will drop a fixed number of homework assignments or quizzes and that they need not worry (or even inform you) if they miss one or do poorly.  
• Setting a policy where assignments are due on a certain date, but late submissions are accepted up to a certain time (for example, one week). Some instructors choose to take off a percent of credit for every 24 hours after the date. With a policy like this, students don't need to email to ask permission. 

Regardless of your approach, we strongly recommend being explicit in your syllabus about whether and when deadlines are flexible, and if they are not generally, describing how students would initiate an exception. When this is not explicit, it becomes a barrier to equity for students. 

If possible, we encourage faculty to involve students in contingency planning, as this can increase self-efficacy in students. Instructors who have co-created policies with their students around things like a “class compact” or “class norms” may find this practice familiar. For example, Paula Patch, Senior Instructor of Composition at Elon University, began her term by asking students a set of questions about their safety and learning priorities, and then led them to identify some personal daily habits and group norms that would support their individual and collective priorities. She used what the group generated to create guidance for both class norms and contingency planning for illness.