This weekly series–a continuation of the CFD summer publication and workshops–will showcase faculty discoveries, strategies, and innovations emerging from HyFlex/remote teaching.
If there is a teaching tip you would like to share, email Mary Balkun, Director of Faculty Development, at <mary.balkun@shu.edu>.
Benjamin Lowe, Management Department
One tip: Beware of deleting a channel within a class when working with Microsoft Teams. I attempted to delete 1 out of 8 channels and it ended up deleting all the channels, including the class. I believe it is a bug in the software since it should not have done this. IT was not able to rebuild the class, which means all the previous notes the students wrote within the channels are gone. I ended up creating 8 separate Teams to get the class going again. Also, by deleting the class in Teams, it eliminates the email group in Outlook for the class.
Chris, McGunnigle, English Department
Using Teams involves a lot of modalities, including the videoconference audio and video, raising hands, and chat, as well as whatever is posted on Blackboard, if instructors are using Blackboard. However, I have found that students don’t do well with instructions written on Blackboard and often have difficulty hearing me, so I have set up a redundancy system when giving instructions. I have instructions on Blackboard, read aloud those instructions, and then post a simplified version of the instructions in the Chat. It has helped increase comprehension of assignment directions drastically.
Dawn Apgar, Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice Department
When I am sharing my screen in Teams, I cannot view remote students. I want to make sure that remote students are engaged so I ask students a lot of questions about the material and use my class roster to call on those who are not physically present in the classroom. I ensure that everyone has been called on at least twice during the class session. I use my knowledge of student performance to match questions to students’ areas of interest/strengths so that there are lots of successes. In addition, I have created a “phone a friend” feature (adapted from the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? gameshow). After a student answers a question, I ask a follow-up and the remote student calls on another remote student to help out and answer the follow-up. It has become fun and a way to keep remote students interacting with one another.
TECH TIPS FROM THE TLTC
Visit the HyFlex Teaching website for many tutorials and resources on Teams, Blackboard Collaborate, Echo360, Respondus LockDown Browser, RPNow, and lots more!
https://www.shu.edu/technology/hyflex-teaching.cfm
System updates are critical to keep your laptop up to date, and to also receive the latest enhancements and security patches of each area. Step by Step directions can be found here: https://tech.shu.edu/selfservice/kb_main.do?sysparm_kb=c39cf83d4fa3c740a9ef0f1f0310c775