You can use the Canvas email feature to write to your students now. (Here’s how.) In that message you might:
- make the human connection about understanding the disruption;
- let them know you want to work with them to make spring courses a valuable experience and a real chance to learn;
- express a sense of value in the class community as one way to be together in a time of uncertainty;
- convey something that feels especially urgent, promising, or moving about the considerations of the course in the context of our present moment;
- let them know how you will next connect.
One UO faculty member writes:
Just brainstorming: I’m thinking it will be helpful for faculty to reach out to their students through their Canvas sites not at the beginning of the term but now—as soon as winter grades are in.
What they can do to help our effort to keep the UO moving forward during this disruption is connect with their classes and give them an idea of what’s exciting and valuable about what they can expect.
Also make the human connection about understanding the disruption and wanting to work with them to make spring courses a valuable experience and a real chance to learn. I’m an old-style teacher, and no one would call me innovative, but even I’ve been imagining how I’d be approaching a spring Intro to Poetry course. I’d be writing to the enrolled students now about what poetry can offer intellectually, socially, emotionally as they live through the pandemic.
I might focus on course content that addresses what they’ll be experiencing, give them writing assignments that tap into that new knowledge, etc. I know not every class has content that can speak to what’s happening, but every teacher can make a human connection, convey what we want to offer our students next term, and give a glimpse of how the class will work (and maybe even work well in new ways). We could convey a sense of adventure and experiment simultaneously communicating compassion and creating connection. All this it to say that the first step might include reaching out to students to give them reasons to stay enrolled.
Great idea!
There are two options to communicate with students before the term begins:
1) In an already published Canvas course, you can send an announcement or canvas email.
Canvas Announcement: https://canvas.uoregon.edu/courses/26382/pages/how-to-create-an-announcement?module_item_id=2494480
Canvas Email: https://canvas.uoregon.edu/courses/26382/pages/how-to-send-email-in-canvas?module_item_id=2494892
2) If your Canvas course is not published, you can not send an announcement or canvas email to all students. However, you can download all student emails from duckweb and send them an email.
– log in to duckweb (duckweb.uoregon.edu)
– go to Faculty Menu
– go to Departments’ Class Lists
– select the Term
– select your Course
– Now you can see all student names and email addresses. There is a link to “Download Class List to Excel” in the top right of the window.
ideas offered by Ulrich Mayr to his Psychology colleagues, shared with permission:
“Finally, I want to encourage us all—in the midst of the sense of emergency and/or trouble shooting—to also try to project a positive framing. After all, there has never been a better time than now to be an ambassador for science and critical thinking. Students next term will be hungry for normalcy, doing something positive for their future, and having a chance to think about something else than the virus threat (or least think about it in a rational manner). This is something we as faculty can offer to students. I would encourage you to contact your students in your next-term classes early with a message along these lines, to keep students engaged and allow them to enter the term with a positive outlook…”
In case seeing an example would help, I sent this to my students in ENG 420/520 (Art of the Sentence) yesterday as an announcement in Canvas. I made the course site live, even though there is nothing else in it that is visible to students. Or me yet, if I’m being honest : )
Dear Students,
I have been looking forward to meeting you on the first day of class in 103 PETR and launching into our study and play with grammar and style, so this remote turn of events is at best disappointing. I love looking at and talking about how sentences work; I love teaching this class; I love discovering what each new group of students finds interesting or bothersome or delightful or breathtaking about the way prose does its work on readers. And here we are, remote. I am not experienced in online teaching and don’t plan to become an expert by using you as test subjects for that learning curve. Instead, as the possibility of joining you on Canvas rather than the classroom became likely, I have been reflecting on how to create a sequence of readings/discussion boards/new assignments that would work for asynchronous, remote learning. While the plan is not yet fully formed, I am excited about the project because it is asking me to translate the heart of this course into a different learning context. As much as possible, my focus is settled on the opportunity this fairly crappy circumstance presents us. I think we can do this together, even if we aren’t together on campus.
Please feel free to be in touch via the Canvas course site or my regular campus email (cjb@uoregon.edu) with questions or to say hello. I will be back in touch soon to ask about the computing resources you can access, and whether or not you will have copies of two the course textbooks (Virginia Tufte, Artful Sentences; Cindy Vitto, Grammar by Diagram). Also, be thinking about writing you love (a sample paragraph or two) that you would like to share with all of us and spend some time with.
I wish we weren’t meeting like this, but I am really glad we are meeting nonetheless.
All the best,
Carolyn
Hi everyone,
Here is a letter I will send to my Ital 105 (and a modified one for Ital 203 & LT 199 students). I am hoping that it will help me convey that we are all in this boat together as well as taking the first steps to
– Build trust and confidence for increasing student agency
– Establish an online presence
Feel free to personalize any part of it, if you find it helpful.
Wishing you all a healthy break and spring term,
Harinder
Ciao a tutti,
I am excited to work with you again in spring. As you know the first three weeks of class we will try to meet virtually at the regularly scheduled class time. During this period, I will ask you to do some learning activities independently, show learning evidence individually and in pairs or groups using Canvas tools. Keeping on task will help us use our virtual class meetings in a more efficient and meaningful way to work on more collaborative and creative communicative tasks. As a preparation for this kind of learning I will set up some orientation activities so we can make sure everything runs smoothly. In the meanwhile, please do the following to start preparing for class.
1. Canvas and Zoom Orientation Activities.
A. Canvas: Meet and greet your instructor and classmates (in Italian): This is a non-graded presentational/interpersonal speaking activity. Post a video where you introduce yourself (your name, where you are from, what you study, anything else you would like to add) and tell us what you did during the break. After you post your video watch at least two of your classmates’ videos, greet them back and make a comment about their post. If possible, continue your conversation with at least one classmate. (ADD assn. link)
B. Zoom: Before the classes begin, I would very much like to set up a 30 min meeting with you all in person via Zoom (a teleconferencing tool we will use as our virtual classroom. Please respond to this Doodle Poll (ADD link) by Tuesday March 25th noon so I can send out a meeting schedule and further instructions to everyone in a timely fashion. You can download Zoom using this link on all your devices. You don’t need to pay for using Zoom.
2. An Important Survey
Even though the first weeks of class will not be a true online language class this readiness online readiness questionnaire (http://tutorials.istudy.psu.edu/learningonline/ORQ/ORQ.htm) will help you and me gauge what kind of support you might need to do remote learning. At the end of the survey students are given links for various study tips which are quite useful. I will create a non-graded Canvas assignment where you can share the results you got to help me help you. Please note that this is a Penn State University survey. If there are tech related issues, UO students should contact the UO tech support instead of PSU .
This is also a good resource for ensuring remote learning success that you might want to check (https://www.learnhowtobecome.org/career-resource-center/student-success-online-college/).
I wish you all a healthy and peaceful spring break and look forward to seeing you virtually first and on campus later.
All the best, Harinder
WAIT THOUGH! Here are fun things you can do to practice Italian while you are practicing Social Distancing (this WAPO simulator shows how effective it is, please check it out)!
Prima di tutto riposati ma poi anche divertiti usando l’italiano!
• Guarda i film italiani in Netflix
• Guarda Harry Potter in Italian al sito dello Yamada Language Center: https://babel.uoregon.edu/vll/resource/ital-104-105Links to an external site. (Login with your UO ID in order to access the recordings)
• Ascolta la musica italiana: https://www.105.net/sezioni/895/hit-italia, http://classifiche.mtv.it/
• Leggi giornali e riviste in italiano:
o La repubblica
o Il corriere della sera
o Vogue
o Espresso
o Riviste Musica (scegli una che t’interessa)
o I migliori blog di viaggi (scegli uno che t’interessa)
o I migliori blog di cucina (scegli uno che t’interessa)
• Fai un ripasso delle ultime lezioni del New Italian Espresso (Lezioni 5, 6, 7)
• Find new ways to practice and learn new Italian vocabulary
o Esercizi di vocabolario
• Practice grammar
o Esercizi sull’utilizzo dell’indicativo presente
o Esercizi sull’utilizzo del passato prossimo
REMEMBER: You can use all or any of this to upload learning evidence on LinguaFolio and watch your proficiency wheel light up
Thank you Harinder. I modeled my letter after yours. The tools and resources you shared are very valuable. I know that my students will feel that I care about them when they see that we are looking out for their best interests.
Here it is as a google doc as well: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kZjbEi28yKjggK-0AJUW3TOMDhrbHVCzzqoBsAuzrLY/edit?usp=sharing
Here’s what I posted as an announcement on my Canvas course. It’s not as lovely as some suggestions here, but it was what I rushed to put together on 3-18. Thank you for all the suggestions above. I’ll send more reassurance to my students, particularly this week and early in the term.
Thank you for all the great ideas!
*************
Welcome to HUM 300 Spring term, 2020. We are now required to start the term using remote learning, and so Canvas will be our key link to one another. Lots of details about the upcoming term at the UO are in flux, but I will be in touch with you via Canvas as details unfold.
The required textbooks (available at the UO Duckstore and also by mail from them) are
The Lais Of Marie De France, trans. Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante
The Book Of Margery Kempe – Penguin, trans. B. A. Windeatt
The Selected Writings Of Christine De Pizan – Norton Critical Edition, ed. Blumenfeld-Kosinski
Readings for the first three weeks will be posted on Canvas (not in books) and will include writings by medieval women from the early and high Middle Ages. If you prefer to use ebooks for the three required texts above, you are welcome to purchase them as an ebook, if you choose.
I will be working this week and next putting together modules on Canvas for our course.
Meantime, rest as much as you can over the Break and be sure to get some relief from all the news about the new virus. I am sending each of you best wishes and hopes for safe travel across the break.
Let me know if you have questions I might be able to answer.
Sincerely,
Prof Laskaya
Thank you for the opportunity to share – and learn – from one another on this important topic.
Where possible, I am trying to stress continuity with students. And I want to emphasize the value of what they will learn.
Here’s an example email sent to my audio storytelling class (J463/563) last week (I am co-teaching this class). I did something similar, each one tailored accordingly, for each class (3) that I am teaching in Spring. Also available as a Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pvsP3TnKXSrK9e6AKZh60_O1tgc9TRDJnBzE9oShtWA/edit?usp=sharing
—
8 real world audio skills and types of knowledge you’ll learn + get to do in this class in Spring 2020
A reminder of the note sent to you (by Canvas email) on 19th March 2020, which gives important context about what you will learn this term and how you will learn it.
We appreciate that the coronavirus has thrown a curveball into plans for this class – and life in general – next term. We know you are all going through a lot, with the news today that all teaching next term will be online only, that graduation will look very different from what you had expected, and that we do not know how long this situation will continue for. We know it’s a deeply unsettling, and confusing, time.
Against that backdrop, we wanted to share with you some thoughts on how I envisage this class working and how + why, it will still be very valuable to you.
Key thing to note, the objectives of this class haven’t changed. You’ll just learn them using some different methods (and some the same) as if we’d had this as a regular face-to-face class.
Broadly speaking, this class has historically done three things:
1. We’ve listened to a lot of audio, in order to develop your radio/podcast producer sensibilities and get a sense of what makes for good audio storytelling.
2. We make a lot of content – including material on the fly and more detailed, production heavy, pieces.
3. We’ve talked to people in a variety of different audio jobs, to get a sense of the range of roles and possibilities for jobs using audio.
We will still do all of those things.
Here’s how:
1. We’ll listen to examples of good/bad audio and critique them – either on video calls, chat, a group blog. (We’ll mix it up.)
2. As in previous years, alongside this, each student will select some listening homework for us. Think of this as a Book Club. But with podcasts.
3. Talking to UO Alums working in radio/audio. There’s a ton of them. We’ll fix up – and ideally record – these conversations, so you can hear about their jobs, their post-SOJC journey, how to find a job using audio etc.
4. Informational interviews with other people in audio. We will work with you to set these up too – targeting the organizations and types of roles you are each interested in, and sharing the learning from these conversations with the group.
5. Learning to write for the ear – we’ll work on scripting and developing this skill.
6. Voiceover and delivery – yes, we’ll do that too. And you can do it on your cell phone.
7. Editing Audio – using free tools like Audacity (or if you have access to Adobe, Garage Band, Pro Tools etc.) to produce a number of stories that showcase your editing skills. We’ll use archive content and other materials (e.g. sound libraries) so you can 100% do this from home.
8. Understand the audio and podcasting landscape – how is it changing, what are the opportunities, why is podcasting hot right now? (e.g. we’ll look at the rise of branded podcasts, the impact of smart speakers)
NB: I should also have added in the original note… Making audio using your laptop and a smartphone. You’ll produce a variety of different types of audio stories, each one showcasing a different skill.
At the end of term, you can expect to be able to :
1. Talk about how podcasting and audio is evolving,
2. Highlight examples of good/bad work (and explain why it’s good/bad),
3. Know people working in the industry and
4. Have a portfolio of your own audio stories.
To do this, I’ll deploy a mixture of methods:
a) Sometimes, we’ll run class synchronously—everyone online together during the scheduled class time
b) On other occasions, it will be asynchronously– meaning you can work through the class content on their own schedule.
c) We may do some mini-classes, where we run the same class twice, back to back, but for an hour each time.
d) Todd and I will still hold (virtual) Office Hours. And we’ll work with you as a coach and mentor as you seek to plan the next step in your careers.
Our plan is to work up the syllabus early next week. But, ahead of that, we thought you might appreciate some initial ideas on what we propose to cover, and how it will be covered.
Ideas, feedback and suggestions are always welcome. Don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s anything we can help with, or you want to know.
Wow–thanks for sharing this, Damian. Really appreciate this focus on the course goals/what student will be learning!
Here are the three orientation activities I created but wasn’t able to assign them before the start of the term (so the due date is 3/30 for my students).
– Syllabus – Read and watch before you take the quiz.
– Conosciamoci un po’! – Let’s get to know each other a little bit! – I posted a video of my own telling them how long I have been living here, studying and teaching Italian, some remarks about how learning never ends, what I did during the break and what are two positive things that I notice in my life despite the terrifying spread of this virus.
– Online readiness questionnaire and reflection
Purpose
This assignment is for helping me and yourself gauge what kind of support you might need to do remote learning.
Task
Take this online readiness questionnaire (http://tutorials.istudy.psu.edu/learningonline/ORQ/ORQ.htm) and study the tips you received at the end of the survey. Also look this resource (https://www.uis.edu/ion/resources/tutorials/pedagogy/successful-online-student/) for further guidance and recommendations and answer the following questions:
– What are your strengths to become a successful online learner?
– On what areas you might need improvement? What are the things you can do and how might your instructor be able to support you in those areas?
– If you have taken online courses before you can also make reference to that experience and tell what worked well and what could have worked better for you.