This collection of technological tips, instructional strategies, and sample assignments and activities was designed by Open Society University Network (OSUN) faculty. Whether working online, in person, or in a blended context, central to all of these practices is establishing a clear and consistent communication plan with your students.
OSUN Connected and Blended Learning Toolkit
Placing Liberal Arts Pedagogies Front and Center
The OSUN Connected and Blended Learning Toolkit, developed by the Center for Learning in Practice (CLiP) at the Carey Institute for Global Good in collaboration with the Open Society University Network and Bard College, is a living document that is open and accessible to faculty across the network, offering support for connected and blended course development.
OSUN Connected and Blended Learning Toolkit
The OSUN Connected and Blended Learning Toolkit, developed by the Center for Learning in Practice (CLiP) at the Carey Institute for Global Good in collaboration with the Open Society University Network and Bard College, is a living document that is open and accessible to faculty across the network, offering support for connected and blended course development. By combining learning theory with pedagogical practice, the toolkit presents a unique self-paced guide to support faculty through the planning and facilitation of online learning experiences that place liberal arts pedagogies front and center. Faculty can use the toolkit in a range of ways--as a guide to planning a course from start to finish, or as a place to turn for specific ideas related to technological tools or classroom activities. The intention is for the toolkit to continue to grow and change, reflecting the needs of faculty across campuses. We welcome your feedback at [email protected].
The OSUN Connected Learning Working Group is pleased to announce a new series of workshops this summer. Drawing on feedback from across the network, these sessions are designed to support faculty as we plan and prepare for Fall 2020 courses with blended and connected learning environments in mind. These workshops are intended to be participatory, engaged sessions, not lectures. Space is limited, so if you register and are no longer able to attend, please make sure that you let us know in advance ([email protected]). Even if you can’t participate, please do not hesitate to be in touch to share future workshop ideas or make requests for campus-specific offerings.
OSUN Connected Learning: Workshop Series II
Workshops All workshops will begin at 8:30AM (NY) / 2:30PM (Berlin and Vienna) / 3:30PM (Palestine and Russia) / 6:30PM (Bishkek) /7:30PM (Vietnam). Unless otherwise noted, workshops will be 2.5 hours in length. These are intended to be participatory, engaged sessions, not lectures. Space is limited, so if you register and are no longer able to attend, please make sure that you let us know in advance ([email protected]).
Rethinking Classes as Connected: Translating Syllabi to go Online Monday, July 13 In this workshop, faculty will reflect on their rapid online learning curve and work toward designing a course to be online or blended from its inception, rather than as an emergency response. We invite faculty to come to this workshop with an existing syllabus intended for in-person teaching, ideally for a course to be taught in the summer or fall. Together we will write and discuss the purpose syllabi serve in our courses and the information they provide students regarding what and how they will learn. We will then identify concrete ways syllabi need to change when adapted to blended or online courses. Through generative writing and small group discussion, participants will annotate, edit and reshape their syllabus, producing an outline for an online or blended version of their course by the end of the workshop. Please click here to register.
Designing Online Course Modules Thursday, July 16 Designing online class sessions means thinking differently about expectations, assignments, and assessments. As faculty, we need to take into account potential connectivity challenges, as well as how to keep our students engaged and excited during each session as well as for the course’s duration. This workshop invites participants to design a module or unit of a course they will be teaching, following the 5- stages model for developing e-tivities by Gilly Salmon. We will address considerations necessary in designing for synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities. Please click here to register.
Cohort and Community Building in Connected Learning Environments Monday, July 20 This workshop invites participants to consider how to plan upcoming blended and connected courses with cohort and community building in mind. Together we will consider ways to engage students so that they develop relationships with one another, regardless of whether or not they ever get the chance to meet face to face. Some of the questions we’ll consider include: How do we intentionally design moments for students to connect authentically with each other? How do we humanize an online learning environment? What strategies are useful for motivating students to interact consistently with faculty and each other? Please click here to register.
Strategies for Developing Online Expectations and Community Standards Thursday, July 23 Connected learning environments call for new ways of thinking about classroom conduct. What does participation mean online and how can it be assessed? How do you support students in low-resource environments? How does the framework of Digital Citizenship influence or relate to my course? In this workshop, participants will look at best practices and begin to develop a statement on classroom community standards and conduct that can be used in online and blended syllabi. One of the goals of the workshop is to consider how such standards can be collaboratively developed with students. Please click here to register.
NEW Creating Engaging Experiences in the Asynchronous Classroom Monday, July 27 This workshop allows participants to explore the systems, mechanics, and assignment/assessment rotations within asynchronous classrooms that foster sustained student engagement as well as produce a strong commitment to community building. In the asynchronous classroom, student independence must be thought through the lens of an already increased amount of freedom and isolation (in the form of both when and how the work gets done). Participants will work through strategies of building consistent engagement through clearly articulated and repeated assignment structures, assignment design that puts student voices first, as well as strategies of avoiding wrought, distance completion. We will consider what it means to participate in a learning community when direct, timely communication is not assumed. Please click here to register.
Making the Most of Multimedia Tuesday, July 28 Connected Learning classes need more than the written word to inspire students and keep them engaged; images, sound and video are critical to creating a successful online class. This workshop will invite faculty to consider how to curate content so that students are neither distracted nor overwhelmed. Please click here to register.
Online Assignments and Formative Feedback Thursday, July 30 This workshop explores an assignment-centered approach to course design, placing an emphasis on what students will learn over what content the instructor will cover. Beginning with the learning outcomes specific to our courses and disciplines, we will work to map out the activities and experiences students will need to have in order to learn the information necessary to succeed on formal (graded) assignments and assessments. With the blended or connected classroom in mind, we will explore a range of ways to scaffold activities synchronously and asynchronously, planning backwards so that feedback and grading practices are transparent and ascertain what students have really learned. Please click here to register.
Responding to Student Writing Online Monday, August 3 Responding to student writing is integral to our liberal arts practice. What are the challenges of doing this in a remote instructional setting? What opportunities does the remote setting present to change our practices? In this workshop we will reflect on the reasons we respond to student writing, explore ways of adapting our favorite response strategies to the online environment, and identifying new strategies that remote teaching makes possible. Please click here to register.
NEW Teaching Blended Classes with F2F and Online Learners: Thinking in Weeks, Not Days Tuesday, August 4 This workshop will invite participants to consider how to effectively teach blended courses, in which some students are sitting in a classroom with the professor while others are learning remotely. Among the remote learners, professors need to consider that some will be unable to join the face to face class online and will be participating in an asynchronous manner. During this session, we will look at each weekly class as spanning over days, not just hours. We will consider what needs to come before the f2f class meeting, what can happen during, and what should follow, in order to most effectively engage all learners in the course. Please click here to register.
NEW Writing (and Living) a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement for Your Online Course Monday, August 17 and Tuesday, August 18 (one 90-minute session each day) In this two-part workshop, participants will explore the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), particularly as they relate to the online classroom. Questions to be explored include: 1) What are the differences among diversity, equity, and inclusion? 2) Why craft a DEI statement for your course? 3) How can your statement be informed by the unique context, online or hybrid format, and particular discipline in which you teach? 4) How do you make sure your statement informs students’ actual day-to-day experience? In Part One, participants will explore DEI principles, the opportunities and challenges associated with applying them in remote classrooms, and how they might relate to various disciplines of study. In Part Two, participants will workshop statements they craft in between the two sessions and explore how the principles expressed in their DEI statements can become reality in their online or hybrid courses. Please click here to register.
Best Practices & Quick Tips These sessions are intended to be shorter conversations focused on specific activities and strategies that have proven to work well in an online or blended learning environment. All sessions will begin at 8:30AM (NY) / 2:30PM (Berlin and Vienna) / 3:30PM (Palestine and Russia) / 6:30PM (Bishkek) /7:30PM (Vietnam) and will be 1.5 hours in length. Space is limited, so if you register please make sure that you let us know in advance ([email protected]) if you are unable to attend.
Planning a Course with Student Engagement in Mind Thursday, August 6 Central to the liberal arts experience is a student-centered classroom experience where learning is an interactive process. The classroom is an environment in which students are encouraged to question assumptions and conclusions, analyze texts and derive their own interpretations, debate and role play, and to learn from one another. This workshop focuses on reimagining these foundational practices with the blended or online classroom in mind. What opportunities does the connected classroom offer? What strategies keep students active and engaged without meeting face to face? How can we translate some of our tried and true practices into a virtual terrain? Please click here to register.
NEW Reinventing Revision: Multimodal Projects Monday, August 10 This workshop focuses specifically on revision: what it is, ways to teach it, and new possibilities and strategies for revising online. Participants will explore practices of radical revision--ways to encourage students to re-see a piece of writing through experimentation with form and genre. Please click here to register.
NEW Virtual Writing Groups: Strategies that Foster Peer Review Thursday, August 13 When peer review works well it can be transformative. However, more often than not, the process of inviting students to share their written work with peers for feedback can result in little more than surface level compliments and grammatical corrections. This workshop will examine how online peer review can serve as a generative process that supports community building through regular attention to students’ written work. Please click here to register.
NEW Taking IWT Online: Writing-Rich Practices for Connected Learning Monday, August 24 Dialectical notebooks, loop-writing, text-rendering, writing from images...many tried and true IWT practices translate to the connected teaching environment with minimal adjustment. In this workshop we will experiment with the online delivery of some of our favorite writing-rich strategies for promoting student engagement and collaboration. Participants will experience what it is like to participate in these familiar writing practices online and what it is like to facilitate online classes that employ them. Please click here to register.
NEW Designing and Assigning: Developing Rubrics for the Connected Classroom Thursday August 27 When we assign papers or other work in classes we’re teaching remotely, it’s hard to make sure our students understand what we’re asking them to do. How do we make sure that all students understand the assignments we give, particularly if they are given online asynchronously? How can rubrics help students to understand what an assignment asks of them? In this workshop, we will think about what rubrics are and what they can do, review sample rubrics, and work together to craft rubrics that will work for the classes we plan to teach. Please click here to register.
Questions? Check out these downloads.
The following instructional resources and technological tips are organized in the form of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). For each question you will find a range of resources that answer the question and offer interdisciplinary examples of assignments and activities one might adapt for their own classes. These resources aim to translate liberal arts and student-centered teaching practices into blended or online formats.
1. How do I transfer seminar-style teaching practices into an online environment?
Seminars are often associated with intimate, in-person classes. What follows is a list of a range of different possible activities that one might use in an in-person seminar, with approaches intended to offer options for replicating these activities online.
2. How do I build and maintain a sense of community in my online course?
It is extremely important that students have the sense of being part of a class community, even if that community exists solely online. The activities that follow represent different approaches to creating a learning community online that is sustained throughout the entirety of the course and hopefully beyond. These approaches aim to help to support initial cohort building, as well as offer practices to use in blended contexts.
3. How do I keep students engaged when they are not gathering each week?
Engaging in online learning is a very different experience from in person, seminar-style classes. Many students might initially struggle to adjust. What follows are some suggestions for how to help students as they move online, and identify the kind of engagement (synchronous or asynchronous) that works best with the student’s situation.
Writing-based teaching practices work particularly well in online and remote learning contexts—they offer ways for all students to engage that can be done synchronously (in real-time) or asynchronously (at the student’s own pace). Writing also invites quieter students to engage in ways other than speaking, and invites collaboration between small and large groups.
Online courses can use many of the same strategies that in person classes use to keep students engaged. Guest speakers can be invited to join via video conferencing synchronously. Students can also replicate the same formal structures (i.e. hand raising) of the in-person classroom environment. Student interaction with speakers can also be encouraged via submitting questions and comments ahead of time or using chat features.
Designing an online course is normally a detailed process that takes a lot of instructional design and planning. When shifting to online learning mid semester, many faculty opt to record or pre-record lectures (video or audio), and use online apps to replicate the classroom blackboard or whiteboard.
7. How do I structure low-tech assignments for remote teaching?
Teaching online does not necessarily mean that one needs to use a range of technically complex teaching tools. There are many low-tech, creative options that invite students to engage meaningfully in course content whatever the topic or field.
8. How can I teach effectively using different online platforms?
Navigating and exploring the many online platforms available and selecting which one works best for your class can be more overwhelming than the platform itself. What follows are video tutorials that aim to provide quick “how to" guides for specific tools and functions.
Remote and online learning can seem daunting in the context of the practicing and performing arts which rely heavily on embodied practice. There are strategies that take advantage of digital tools in order to expand how studio- related work can be translated online in a way that is productive for students. This includes collaborative visual projects, discussions of filmed works, and assignments intended to focus on specific techniques.
Teaching remotely in STEM offers the added benefit of virtual labs and simulations, enabling students to have the opportunity to problem-solve and experiment as they would in person.
Many humanities courses are text-based, which makes remote and blended learning an exciting opportunity to invite students to think deeply about these texts in different ways, taking advantage of multimedia, collaborative writing and discussion.
The practice of language learning involves writing, reading, and speaking activities that work particularly well online. These strategies include taking advantage of discussion forums to prepare students for synchronous video discussions, creating storybooks, and listening/dictation activities. There are also a range of apps and tools that help to facilitate and replicate the routines of in-person instruction: vocabulary practice using quizlet, utilizing virtual whiteboards, scaffolded group work and presentations.