A Brief Introduction to Remote Teaching

There are two options for instructors to facilitate class sessions remotely:

• Synchronous: instructors and students gather at the same time and interact in “real time” with a very short or “near-real time” exchange between instructors and students.
  • Some eClass features you might use for synchronous instruction include Google Hangouts/Meet or eClass Chat.
  • Start a Google Meet video meeting
• Asynchronous: instructors prepare course materials for students in advance of students’ access. Students may access the course materials at a time of their choosing and will interact with each over a longer period of time. Many eClass features can be used for asynchronous instruction including Forums, Lessons, URLs, uploaded Files, and Workshops.

Instructors may choose to engage their students synchronously or asynchronously depending on the course content or material that needs to be taught.

1. Immediate personal engagement between students and instructors, which may create greater feelings of community and lessen feelings of isolation
2. More responsive exchanges between students and instructors, which may prevent miscommunication or misunderstanding

1. More challenging to schedule shared times for all students and instructors
2. Some students may face technical challenges or difficulties if they do not have fast or powerful Wi-Fi networks accessible

1. Higher levels of temporal flexibility, which may simultaneously make the learning experiences more accessible to different students and also make an archive of past materials accessible.
2. Increased cognitive engagement since students will have more time to engage with and explore the course material.

1. Students may feel less personally exchanged and less satisfied without the social interaction between their peers and instructors.
2. Course material may be misunderstood or have the potential to be misconstrued without the real-time interaction.

Pedagogical Recommendations

• If using Zoom (recommended), open the participants panel and chat in every room you enter. Ensure you remind students to open chat as well.
• Use slides and screen sharing within Zoom or Google Meet to make sure discussion questions are visible to students who may have a slow Internet connection or who may struggle to hear the audio for the initial question.
  • On your first slide, display an agenda at the start of the class session so that students know what to expect of the shared time together.
• Use the chat feature in the video chat platform (such as Zoom or Google Meet) you are using.
  • Moderate discussion, i.e., “call on” a student with a comment to speak, to help them break into the conversation.
  • For larger classes, assign a TA to moderate the chat and make sure important questions and comments are addressed. Even for smaller classes, it may be worthwhile to ask a student (or two) to take on special roles as “chat monitors” to voice if there are questions that arise that the instructor has missed.
  • You might use the chat to troubleshoot technical problems. For example, if a student is having trouble connecting via audio or video, the chat might be a space for you as the instructor or for fellow students to work together to problem-solve. This may, again, be an opportunity to assign a student to a special role, especially if you have students eager to help on the technical aspect of things.
    • If you have a TA or a fellow who can support the class instruction with technical help, this would also be a good person to respond to troubleshooting tips in the chat.
    • Please note that IST has released a guide for students preparing to learn online.
• Use ‘Breakout’ Rooms to help students talk in smaller groups (just as they would do break-out groups in a larger class environment).
  • Zoom can easily facilitate small discussions (or even pair shares) using a feature called breakout rooms.
  • In Google Meet, the best way to achieve this is to have separate rooms created for students to meet in. We suggest having a google document made with group names and assigned meeting room URLs posted on your eClass.
• Rethink your classroom activities to make the class more interactive even if students don’t have ideal connections and aren’t able to hear and see everything perfectly. Have students write and comment together on a shared Google Doc. Try using ePoll or Google Forms to collect student responses, and then share results with both in-person and online students.
• Consider making discussion questions available in advance on eClass so that students can access the questions if screen sharing does not work. If sharing slides in advance to eClass, share as PDFs, as students will be able to access the material on their phones.
• If you often play video or audio files in class with your students, this video from the Royal Academy of Music shows you how to set up zoom to share your system audio. 

A Few Troubleshooting Tips:

• If your microphone is not working, use the phone number listed in the Zoom Room or Google Meet invitation when you set up a call. You can use your phone as the microphone and audio source for your call rather than your computer’s built-in microphone if necessary.
• If your Internet connection is slow or lagging, consider temporarily turning off your video stream and only maintaining the audio stream. Sometimes, running the web camera on your computer will use up the Internet’s bandwidth in a way that might make communication challenging. Turning off the video should improve communication quality and consistency.
• If you have earbuds or a headphone set, wear them! Wearing earbuds or headphones will reduce the amount of noise that your computer will pick up during your call, which will make it easier for your students to hear you. Similarly, you may want to advise your students to wear earbuds or headphones during the call.
• Advise students to mute their microphones if they are not speaking and unmute the microphones when they wish to speak. Students may be joining video calls from all kinds of different locations, many of which may create background noise that could be distracting. Encourage students to mute themselves if they’re not speaking to minimize unnecessary or distracting background noise. Using the “raise hand” feature or simply seeing the microphone unmuted will give the group a visual cue for when a student wishes to speak.
  • Within Zoom, the Host has the ability to mute and unmute all students and can set the room to automatically mute participants on entry.
• Check the “chat” space for student questions and contributions. Some students may not have working microphones and, therefore, may be unable to contribute via voice. The chat room is a good place for students to contribute, ask questions, and be involved.
• Check the Zoom Support Page or Google Meet Help Section.

Accessibility Suggestions:

• Automatic live captioning is available with Google Meet (turn on the CC feature at the bottom of your screen). If using another video chat platform, You may wish to use Google Slides and enable the live captioning feature within Google Slides.
  • If you share your screen using Google Slides, your voice will be captured and live captions will appear. See Present Slides with Captions for more information.
  • Note that Zoom can have closed captions but requires someone to type these as the class is occurring.
• For students who are blind or have low visibility, narrate the material that you’re displaying visually on the screen. Just as you might read materials aloud in class, read screen material that you share on-screen just in case students are not able to see essential text.
• Keep in mind the different accessibility needs of your students. For best practices, consult resources on Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Some examples include:
  • CAST Professional Learning’s site
  • eCampus Alberta’s Open Educational Resource on UDL in Online Learning Environments

If you are not comfortable presenting live, another good option is to pre-record any lecture material and share it on eClass. We recommend that you pre-record lectures and add captions that are needed for accessibility reasons.

Think of these as “micro lectures” (as coined by ACUE), they should be concise and clear (and not the only source of learning). Some suggestions when recording (micro)lectures:

• You can record your lectures using Google Meet and automatically save these to your Google Drive or record using Zoom and save to the cloud 
• A new feature, Stream2, allows instructors to record their microlecture and automatically post this on eClass
• If you record a video using another platform, such as Screencast-o-matic (free), you can upload your video to Google Drive or YouTube for easy sharing.
  • Try to keep videos to a maximum of 10 - 15 minute videos as uploading large videos can take quite a long time and even crash web browsers.
• You can also create recorded lectures using voiceover narration in slidedeck creation software via Keynote (Mac), PowerPoint (Mac or PC), or Quicktime (Mac).
• Videos can be shared from Google Drive to eClass by adding a URL (recommended) or by embedding the video
• For EDI purposes, you can add captions to your videos see these link for assistance
  • Adding captions on videos uploaded to Google drive
  • Adding captions to YouTube Videos

Pedagogical Recommendations

• Keep videos short and lively. It is often harder to focus on a video than on a person! Check out some tips for creating lively short online videos from online educator Karen Costa.
  • Try to keep videos to a maximum of 10 - 15 minute videos as uploading large videos can take quite a long time and even crash web browsers.
• Test your microphone to make sure that you have good sound quality. Consider using a headset with an external microphone to capture better audio.
• Consider accessibility. Automatic closed-captioning is not perfect. Speak clearly and not too quickly to make the content as accurate as possible.
  • If using a tool other than Google Meet for recording your lecture, consider uploading your videos to YouTube to take advantage of their automatic (though not perfect) closed-captioning.
• Integrate interaction with the lecture material. You might consider setting up an eClass discussion board with some specific questions, using a quiz, or setting up a chat session for a text-based live discussion.
• Remember to consider accessibility requirements for students as they are watching videos.

Many online courses do not have a video component at all. If you are not sure you have the right equipment and are uncomfortable with the tech setup, this might be a good option, at least for the short-term.

Pedagogical Recommendations

• Annotate your slideshow with notes and share this with students using eClass or email
• Set up a discussion (a.k.a. Forum) for students in eClass. Use specific, structured questions, and let students know expectations for their responses. See our recommendations on Written Discussions.
• Share links to outside resources. Encourage students to watch videos, read articles, etc.
• Use Chat to have a live, text-based chat session with students. See our recommendations on Chat.

Set up virtual office hours to meet with students using your webcam, share your computer screen or collaborate using Google Docs. If you are more comfortable, you can also give students your phone number to call, or you can set up an online chat.

Recommended Platforms:

• Zoom (post the room on your eClass)
• Google Meet (post a URL of your meeting room on eClass)

Pedagogical Recommendations

• Keep the link to the video chat room you’re using for your students in a central place on your course eClass page. The main factor to consider when holding office hours or conferences with students via video chat is your accessibility as an instructor. Make sure they know how to find your “office” (just as you might offer them directions to your office on-campus).
• Encourage students to share their screen with you. Screen sharing is possible not just for the instructor in Google Meet, but for students too. Help your students navigate towards a screen sharing option so that they can show you their written work on their screen.

To remove technical hurdles and to ensure that students are able to engage with peers and each other in a discussion-based class (even without a strong Internet connection), you might choose to move student discussion to an asynchronous format. Create an eClass Forum to facilitate communication, encourage students to interact, ask questions and respond to discussion prompts.

Pedagogical recommendations:

• Craft discussion questions to be as clear and as specific as possible so that students can build off of the question for a sustained response.
  • See Stanford TeachingCommons’ “Designing Effective Discussion Questions”
  • See “Conversation Starters: Orchestrating Asynchronous Discussion to Build Academic Community among First-Year Writers” by Dan Seward
• Assign roles to students so that they understand when and how they might respond to you or their peers. For example, students might “role play” as particular kinds of respondents or you might ask them to do particular tasks (e.g. be a summarizer, a respondent, a connector with outside resources).

You may not currently use a chat function in your class, but it can be a useful tool, especially for student office hours or for students who may be more comfortable asking questions via chat compared to by phone or video calls.

In eClass, there is a Chat tool available that functions as an instant messaging platform. The messages in chat are visible to the full class community and can be read in real time.

Learn more: How do I use chat as an instructor?

Asynchronous
Recommended Tool: Google Docs

If you usually send around a physical sign-in sheet, you might be looking for alternatives that let you schedule appointment slots with students.

You may book and reserve time with students in three different ways:

• Embed a Google Doc/Sheet into the course eClass page/an eClass announcement. Create an openly editable Google Document or Sheet with a table of available appointments for students to sign up for appointments. The link to edit the Doc or Sheet could be shared via an Announcement in eClass or could be directly embedded as a URL within eClass.
  • Note, this will allow ALL students to sign up at the same time (and edit each other’s submissions). Be very clear with students about not deleting their peers’ names after they are posted.
  • For assistance, see the Sharing files from Google Drive Help Page

Synchronous Recommended Tool: Google Docs & Google Meet
Asynchronous Recommended Tool: eClass Workshops or Google Docs

Pedagogical Recommendations

• Write out clear and specific instructions about the expectations for peer review. This means specifying the qualities of writing that students may want to look for in each other’s work. Distributing guiding questions or a worksheet that students can fill out as they review their peer’s work can be a valuable supplement to guide students’ virtual reading.
• If you are introducing peer review synchronously (via Google Meet or use Zoom’s breakout rooms) and having students work in real time in Google Docs, consider:
  • Engaging the students in a chat-based or video-based conversation about their expectations for peer review
  • Have students use the chat box (in either Meet or Zoom) feature to share ideas about what makes for effective peer review
  • Use a polling tool, like ePoll or Google Forms, to collect ideas about students’ impressions of and expectations for peer review
• If you are introducing peer review asynchronously, consider:
  • Opening up a discussion forum with a prompt that invites students to share their past experiences with peer review. What worked? What didn’t? What are their goals this time? Aggregate student responses to create a document that outlines the class expectations and understandings of effective peer review experiences.
  • Ask students to include questions for their peer reviewers at the top of their document so that their reviewers can have a sense of what the author would like them to focus on.
• Include links to technical documentation and support so that students can troubleshoot if they are not able to access peers’ documents. How to share documents within Google Drive.

When putting lab work online, you have the same options for content delivery as above but the nature of the working time for students will certainly be different.

Pedagogical Recommendations:

• Show students a video of how data is collected and provide them with a data set with which to complete the lab.
  • Students can still work in groups using Zoom breakout rooms.
• Heather Taft offers some suggestions for labs here
• You might also consider using videos from the Science Education Video Journal
• Use an openly accessed data set and have students analyze these sets
  • See this google sheet for online data for use in Ecology and Environmental Science
• Applets and simulators can be a great source of data collection
  • PhET has some excellent simulations for all areas of science

In eClass, the Quiz tool can be used as a course exam.

Pedagogical Recommendations:

• Quizzes can consist of automatically graded questions or essay questions (which require instructor grading). We recommend the use of both types of questions on an exam.
• Give students explicit instructions on exams as they may not be able to ask any questions during the exam.

Preventing Academic Misconduct: One of the biggest concerns many instructors have when using online exams is that students may be able to easily cheat. While no type of exam is completely misconduct proof, there are ways to design online exams to minimize these opportunities. Some examples include:

• adding an honesty check to your exam.
• shuffling the question order during an exam.
• randomizing question selection.
• limiting access to quizzes by adding a password and giving specific time windows for completion.
• using eClass’ academic integrity feature, ExamLock (which is built into eClass).
• use a remote proctoring service.
  • The U of A currently uses the PSI remote proctoring service. If you are interested in using this service, please contact Information Services & Technology for more information.
• consider giving open-book or take home exams.
  • Unlike some closed-book exams, open-book exams typically do not use memorize or recall type questions (since students have these answers in front of them) but, instead, tend to rely on questions that ask students to apply their knowledge or synthesize what they have learned to answer complex questions.
  • This document from Ryerson University provides some excellent advice and considerations when moving to an open-book exam.
  • The difference between these two formats is that an open-book exam is often completed in a specific time frame (similar to a traditional exam) whereas a take home exam will occur over 2 or 3 days. For more on the difference between open-book and take-home exams, please see our document “Alternatives to Final Exams.”
  • If you would like assistance (or advice) regarding converting your closed-book exams to an open-book or take-home exam, please contact ctl@ualberta.ca to book a consultation (which may occur remotely).
• If your class is a manageable size, have students write their open-book style exam while having Zoom open (and you viewing gallery view), with their microphone and video on.

Instructions on how to execute many of the non-linked options above can be found on ISTs help pages (Knowledgebase).

In eClass, instructors can add Assignment spaces to which students can submit any written assignments for grading. We suggest having students submit work as Word or PDF documents since these are easiest to grade in eClass.

Pedagogical Recommendations:

• If your assignments require students to (or if it is easier to) handwrite their responses, they can either (1) write their response and scan a copy for uploading to eClass, or (2) use a writing application if they have access to a touchscreen or tablet.
  • For these written assignments, eClass has “Crowdmark” available. This software allows students to submit homework by either scanning or taking photos of their work.
  • If students choose to scan their work, encourage them to ensure their writing is dark enough that it can be read. Very light writing becomes even more difficult to read when scanned.
  • If they use a touchscreen or tablet,
    • there are free note-taking apps of which they can take advantage. One example (that is not officially endorsed by the U of A) is Notebook by Zoho (available for iOS or Android).
    • encourage students to use a stylus and work slowly to produce readable work.
• eClass offers a rubric tool within their grading that makes grading with simple rubrics quite efficient. Unfortunately, using this tool can be problematic for those instructors who use ranges on their rubric or have multiple statements within each block. If this is your scenario, consider having students embed this rubric into their assignment (e.g. as the final page). This way, graders can comment right onto the rubric.
• You can have students submit assignments in groups or individuals. See this Knowledge Base page for more information on group submissions.

Pedagogical Recommendations:

• If students are sharing their presentations asynchronously:
  • Ask students to record themselves at their screen, using a web camera, the built-in microphone on their computer, and screen sharing software combined to capture both their faces/persons as well as the slides on the screen.
    • They can record their presentations using Google Meet and Zoom and save these to their Google Drive for easy sharing.
    • If students record a video using another platform, such as Screencast-o-matic (free), they can upload your video to Google Drive or Youtube for easy sharing.
    • Voiceover narration in slidedeck creation software can also be used via Keynote (Mac), PowerPoint (Mac or PC), or Quicktime (Mac).
    • Students can save their final recording file and upload it to (1) eClass via Assignments or Forums or (2) Google Drive.
      • In eClass, If students submit the recording via Assignments, the file will only be visible to the instructor. If students submit the recording via Forum, the file will be visible to the full class community.
        • If students submit via Assignments, they can submit as individuals (default) or groups (see here).
        • Assistance for uploading videos in eClass can be found here.
      • If students submit the recording via Google Drive, you can either have students submit to a shared folder you have created OR submit a link to their video through eClass.
        • If students are submitting to make sure the appropriate share settings have been enabled for students to upload their own files to a folder that you have created
        • If students are submitting a link to either an assignment or discussion on eClass (or via email), be clear on the sharing settings you require for them to share the link with you.
        • In both cases, please advise students to upload videos that are a maximum of 10 - 15 minutes as uploading large videos can take quite a long time and even crash web browsers.
    • If students do not have access to a laptop computer or webcam, they can also use the voice memo feature on a phone to record audio, save audio files, and upload the audio files to either eClass or Google Drive. Invite students to share any slides and audio/video files separately if necessary.
• If students are sharing their presentations synchronously:
  • Ask students to use Google Meet or Zoom to give a live presentation for their peers. See Advice for using video chat for Synchronous Class Sessions for suggestions.

1. Tips and Tricks for Teaching in the Online Classroom: Jim Harrison and J. Diane Martonis (Faculty Focus)
2. Selecting the Appropriate Communication Tools for Your Online Course: Rob Kelly (Faculty Focus)
3. Eight Lessons Learned from Teaching Online: EDUCAUSE Research Library
4. How To Be a Better Online Teacher: Flower Darby (Chronicle of Higher Education)
5. Universal Design for Learning in Online Environments (eCampus Alberta)
6. Teaching Online Tips from the Association of College & University Educators