As you make plans for remote teaching during an emergency, focus on what tasks you are trying to accomplish. Many face-to-face teaching and learning practices have reasonable online alternatives.
Share readings and texts via links in Sakai (use Resources tool or Lessons tool)
Class discussion
Current Practice
Online Alternative
Instructor-led mini lecture plus student-driven discussion
Deliver mini-lecture in real time or pre-recorded via Zoom. For synchronous discussion run a live session on Zoom. For asynchronous discussion use Sakai forums with a question prompt.
Group/team-based in-class discussions
Use Zoom breakout rooms to manage small group discussions. Bring students back into larger Zoom session to share out.
Assignments and assessments
Current Practice
Online Alternative
Papers
Use the Sakai Assignments tool to collect student papers or other works in pdf or Word format to review and grade. If you just need to collect ungraded drafts for feedback, the Sakai Drop Box tool can be useful.
Exams
The Test & Quizzes tool in Sakai supports various types of question types (e.g., multiple choice, numeric entry, text entry, essay, file upload). Adapting tests and quizzes will take more time. You would need to build the questions for each assessment either one-by-one or using markup text or cut and paste.
Student presentations
Use Zoom for live presentations; VoiceThread and other tools available for audio-narrated interaction. Read a blog post by Duke Learning Innovation here: “Online Student Presentations“.
Students can upload code files using the Sakai Drop Box for faculty to download and review. Gradescope is a more advanced option for coding assignments, which requires more setup.
Labs
Harvard’s LabXchange is an open and free option for virtual labs. Alternatively, record a video of a lab demonstration and then create an assessment that has students analyze the lab experiment and write a lab report. It is also helpful to check with your textbook publisher to see the online content and activities available to you and your students. Many textbook publishers have consultants that can help you plan your lab-based simulations.
