Creative Writing Colleagues: This page is intended as a crowdsourced resource for shifting your courses to remote learning. The tips and techniques are gathered from all corners of the virtual and real worlds, so some will be more useful than others. If you come across any tips to include here, please email them to us and we'll post them here.
CONTINUITY TOOLKITS
- The SAS Online Learning team has created course-continuity toolkits in preparation of modifications to standard course operations due to emergencies affecting on-campus Penn LPS courses:
- Faculty Course-Continuity Toolkit: Resources and Strategies for Teaching Remotely
- Student Course-Continuity Tool: Resources and Strategies for Learning Remotely
NOMENCLATURE:
- Please refer, particularly in writing, to remote teaching as opposed to online teaching, the reason being that the designation “online” can imperil international students’ visas. — Paul K. Saint-Amour
AN ARGUMENT FOR KEEPING THINGS LOW-TECH...AND THEN SOME LOW-TECH:
- Please do a bad job of putting your courses online (Rebecca Barrett-Fox)
- Low-tech adaptation: Making PowerPoint with Audio Presentation. A simple way to trim audio files of lectures and then embed them into a PowerPoint presentation (for Mac users). (Tony Barnstone)
- ZOOM basics from SAS Computing
- ZOOM tips from LPS’ Anna Safford
- ZOOM Cheat Sheet from Stanford University (ignore the Stanford-specific references)
SAS REMOTE LEARNING TIPS
- Only if absolutely necessary and for small class sizes (20 or fewer students) where interaction is the essence of the teaching, use Zoom to facilitate live participation and interaction. It is essential that you have a backup, lower-tech plan in place such as Discussion Board or Canvas Conference should Zoom fail for whatever reason. This plan can also be used to enable the full participation of students who cannot connect effectively to the live session.
- Demand on Zoom is going to be extremely high both on campus and across the country; in addition, you or your students may simply have trouble getting a Zoom conference set up and working properly on any given occasion.
- Before the semester resumes, send an email to your class and post an announcement on the course Canvas site explaining how lectures and/or class meetings will be conducted remotely
PEER-TO-PEER BEST PRACTICES:
- From Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies: Rapid Response Pedagogy Resources
- From Silas Hansen at Ball State University: Advice for First-Time [Remote] Teachers
- From Marshall Moore, who teaches in Hong Kong: A few tips on the switch to [remote] teaching (how I have handled it in Hong Kong)
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: How to Keep Teaching During Coronavirus
DOCUMENTARIES/VIDEOS ON WRITING:
- Kelly Writers House Multimedia Archives
- Richard Hugo: Kicking the Loose Gravel Home (57 min)
- Gerald Stern: Still Burning (20 min)
- Poets in Pajamas