“Emergency remote instruction is not the same as online teaching and learning.

Strategies in Meeting Students’ Needs

Faculty preparing to teach a formal online course can spend six months or more designing it.
We had two weeks to prepare for remote instruction at CLU. Rather than seeking to create
the ideal online course experience for students, keep your focus on simple, “good enough”
solutions. 

What is affecting learners:

Keep in mind, faculty and students are dealing with illness, xenophobia, racism, economic
distress, homophobia, childcare, lost jobs, classism, loneliness, isolation & other stressors start
off at a different point in their readiness to learn or to teach…… Exercise grace.

Goal: Be realistic about meeting learning objectives. Exercise grace and be flexible.
As more students and faculty and staff become sick, it’s clearly going to shake our plans yet
again. It’s imperative that we all remain flexible.

The document below provides guidelines on how to ease stress incurred by faculty and
students while meeting most of the learning objectives in your course.

1. Communication
a. Every Sunday or Monday, send an Announcement or Email indicating what is
expected for only the current week.
b. Try to communicate with your students about assignments and projects to put them at
ease.
c. Provide motivational support. Ask your students how they are doing away from the on
ground course. Give them time to articulate what they are going through and how they are set up
to learn.
d. Inspire your students that they can do this and the term is not much longer.
e. Be human – share your experience with them too!
f. Reach out to those who missed an assignment, address their needs, offer
accommodations, be flexible and listen to your students.
g. Create a discussion forum – Connect students with students (support each other, re-
establish/maintain connection, share frustrations)
h. Ask your student to email you their concerns, difficulties with the course, as well as
life in general. (Your words go a long way to a student.)
i. Be kind to yourself and your students. This is a difficult time for everyone for more
reasons than just learning online.
 j. Tell your students you miss their presence in the on-ground class. Create your presence
online and provide virtual comfort.
i. Your course can be therapeutic to students.
j. Virtual office hours

2. To Support Learning
a. Keep it simple. Don’t use too much technology for the sake of technology.
b. Revise your goals and priorities to accommodate student needs. Many of our students
immediately lost jobs and incomes and were thrust into poverty almost overnight. Many of them
don’t have Wi-Fi access, and some of our teaching lecturers don’t, either.

c. Create a manageable amount of content (small chunks, avoid content overload).

d. Simplify expectations – quality over quantity
e. Create exam review sessions
f. Provide clear and timely feedback on assignments.
g. Provide students with the opportunity to connect course content to their own
academic, professional and personal experiences produce knowledge through a
transformative process.
h. Create a safe environment for students to collaborate with peers forms a community
and builds a sense of belonging.

Health/Self Care

 Acknowledge crisis with yourself and students

 Take regular breaks
 Making time to exercise
 Keep to a regular sleep schedule
 Limit distractions when possible (turn off social media notifications, for example)
 Set daily and weekly goals
 Make time to socialize, even if it’s virtually

Most faculty and students did not sign up to teach and/or learn online. However, we are fortunate
to have a learning management system (Blackboard) and Zoom in place to use effectively given
our circumstance.

step-by-step guide on how to access and use online learning tools (LeAnne link)

- Reflect on your adjusting process and teaching practice

Sources

Harvard
DePaul
Ohio State
Stanford
Columbia