As we have once again found ourselves in online teaching scenario, we wanted to revisit some of the resources and support available to you.
The best place to start would be visiting the Supporting your Teaching webpages which includes resources such as:
- Teaching Online? How to make Blackboard Activities more interactive with Adaptive Release
- Blackboard Tests: Creating Online Assessment Activities for your students
- Tips for Discussion Board Engagement
- Monitoring Student Engagement while teaching online
- Tips for Teaching with MS Teams
- Taking part in lectures, seminars or tutorials via Teams (students)
Secondly, please visit our training page to book a space on our upcoming training:
- 19/01/2021 – Active Learning and Online Engagement
- 27/01/2021 – Academy Forum 5: How can I plan online and in-person activities
- 09/02/2021 – E-learning Enhanced: Using the advanced features of Panopto
We are also planning to offer additional training sessions on using breakout rooms as well as e-learning drop-in sessions every Tuesday at 10:00-11:00 and Thursday at 14:00-15:00 between 19th of January and 4th of February). Links to the drop-ins are available on our blog.
Finally, please visit our blog including further tips and guidelines:
- Content Organisation in Blackboard
- Motivation strategies for online engagement – reflections from the last Academy Forum in Semester One
- NEW feature – Breakout Rooms in MS Teams
- NEW Recurring MS Teams Meeting Feature in Blackboard
- Alternative activities to in-person teaching
- Helping Students to Make Most of Recorded Lectures – Using Discussion and Notes in Panopto
- Using Podcasts for Teaching
- Tips for monitoring chat for online and in person sessions
- Engaging students with asynchronous online tasks: Self-Determination Theory (SDT) Perspective
To reiterate some of the key points from the resources above, when it comes to online teaching and engagement best are:
- Make it shorter, students will not be able to focus on an hour-long recording.
- Make it engaging, whether it is a Panopto recording or a live session in Teams, there are multiple functionalities and ways of facilitating active learning rather than creating transmission based content.
- Integrate all your teaching components, in recorded lectures refer to live seminars, readings, focus on creating a continuous learning path for students.
We have no doubt that all staff will successfully meet the demands of the current situation. Please do get in touch with any queries or suggestions of needed training and resources: lteu@aber.ac.uk.