Academic Continuity
A variety of circumstances may require you to move your class online temporarily. If this occurs, Canvas, LCCC’s learning management system can help you continue your course online. Through Canvas you can communicate with students, post announcements, assignments, course content, as well as assign quizzes, discussion boards, and tests.
1. Resources for Online Teaching:
If an emergency situation causes a campus closure or prevents you from coming to campus, please note that you have a variety tools and resources to move your teaching online. We have put together a course called the "Center for Online Learning" for any faculty that is interested in using Canvas. The course can be found at
https://lccc.instructure.com/courses/3192.
2. Resources for Online Students:
Like most colleges and univerisities, LCCC uses what is called a "learning management system" or an "LMS" for online courses. We have put together a course called the "Canvas Student Orientation" for anyone that is interested in learning about Canvas. The orientation can be found at
https://lccc.instructure.com/courses/17.
3. Strategies for Online Teaching
- Prepare for Schedule Changes: Watch for communications from college leaders through email or on website and make adjustments accordingly. Check with your school dean if you are unsure of any adjustments.
- Communicate with Students: Students will be watching for communications from you and the college. Communicate with students on a regular basis, even if it is to tell them that you have no new updates.
- Utilize Tools Available from The Department of Online Learning: Register for trainings by going to the myLCCC Portal and clicking Professional Development Offerings in the Launchpad, or access the Center for Online Learning at https://lccc.instructure.com/courses/3192.
4. Online Pedagogy
Instructor Presence in an Online Course
One of the biggest challenges reported by students taking an online course is a perceived disconnect between themselves and the instructor or other students in the class. In an in person class, social connection is conveyed naturally through interaction. Online, this connection must be deliberately created.
Instructor presence in a class is divided into two categories - social presence and teaching Presence. As the names imply, social presence refers to the perceived connection between individuals in an online environment and teaching presence is the methods of instruction in a course.
Tools and Strategies to Facilitate Instructor Presence
Video - While the idea of recording yourself may be intimidating, videos can be an excellent stand in for instructor led lectures and are a valuable tool for connecting to students. Tone can be difficult to convey online and videos give your students the chance to become comfortable with your way of speaking and facial expressions. Information can also typically be conveyed more quickly through the use of video than in written form.
Discussion Forums - The discussion forum tool in Canvas allows an instructor to pose a question or prompt to students and students to post responses and reply to each others' posts. The rich content editor even supports embedding photos and videos for a media rich discussion. Encouraging students to include media content in their posts can help them feel more connected to each other and more closely mimic the experience of an in person discussion.
Quick Tip! If you stagger discussion post due dates so that students must post their own responses to the question by a certain date and respond to others by a few days later, you will largely avoid the issue of most students waiting until the last minute and not having anyone to respond to!
Pay Attention to Tone - When providing written feedback for students, the use of formal phrasing often comes across as stiff or harsh. While staying professional, don't be afraid to relax your phrasing and use punctuation to make tone and emotions more clear! Using more exclamation points or even simple emojis where appropriate can help clarify your meaning and intended tone =)
Prompt Communication and Feedback - If students are left waiting days or weeks for answers to their questions or to find out how they performed on an assignment, they will not only feel a disconnect between themselves and the instructor, but also won't be able to effectively apply the feedback to the work to improve in the future!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WYGYhs3uFo
To learn more, sign up for our online training. Go to Professional Development Offerings in the Launchpad of the myLCCC Portal to register.