Let’s skip over your summer, since I’m guessing your institution has been like mine: pushing for us to get Covid-ready for the new semester, while not being particularly certain what that might actually look like.
Upshot, a load of prep to be able to cope with a bunch of different and dynamic scenarios and the dawning realisation that whatever room we work in at home is going to become the star of a large number of videos on the local student network [do check what’s on your bookshelf BTW].
Since I’ve had the good fortune to actually get away from work properly for a couple of weeks (albeit only a hour’s drive from home), I’m coming back into this with a bunch of work and a need to get through it efficiently, so I’m going to share my plan of attack in the hope it’s of use to you.
Step 1: Be clear about your teaching obligations this semester. I’m lucky that I know what classes I’m teaching, what support I might be getting for seminars, rough numbers of students, and even a sense of my timetable. You might not be in that situation, so make this your first port of call. Even just some ballpark figures for the latter stuff matters in making some very basic choices about what choices you’ll be making in designing learning objectives and methods of teaching.
Step 2: Remind yourself what your institution’s new protocols are. Again, my university has produced both strategic and more operational guides on what is and isn’t allowed, so I’ve a good baseline to go on. Let’s assume your institution has created such documents in good (pedagogic) faith to optimise both student learning and Covid resilience, so working with these is a positive step forward; plus it keeps you in step with the rest of your colleagues in creating more consistent learning environments for students. Check you’re reading the latest version and whether your local unit has any additional elaborations and principles in place too.
Step 3: Build the overall learning environment for your course. As you’ll remember, it’s not the technology that should lead your designing, but the learning objectives. You have to be clear – with yourself as much as with students – about what you want them to gain from the course, so ensure that the entire package of that course allows them the opportunity to learn that. That includes online and offline, synchronous and asynchronous, group and individual elements.
Step 4: Adjust your design to institutional protocols where necessary, while still keeping your learning objectives clearly in sight. This is where I’m up to right now; doing things like breaking up pre-recorded video into smaller chunks and developing more asynchronous online elements that tessellate with in-class work. Talking about this with colleagues is super-useful, both because trying to explain your thoughts can unblock ideas and because your colleagues have some great ideas you can re-use.
Step 5: Do the donkey work for creating all the new content you need. I’m planning to get at least the first four weeks of the semester ready in its entirety for the time that students are due back, since I’m guessing that’s going to be the biggest stress point, as we all try to work stuff out. I’d say to do more if you can, but also remember you will need to carry out running modifications in-semester, so don’t sink too many costs that you can’t recover.
Step 6: Teach. All the other stuff is going to take you through the rest of the summer, so there’s nothing else to suggest than getting into it and then doing those running adaptations I just mentioned. Talk with students regularly and specifically about your course’s design and highlight to them how you’re using their input to modify what you do; that can begin from the second or third week, once everyone’s a bit less fraught and the initial shock of the new has worn off. Also talk with colleagues about how it’s all going too: their ideas are still great and they might be able to head off issues you can see looming in the distance.
And that’s is.
Still a long list, though, so time to crack on with it and remember you’ve got it covered.