AVĪŽĀė

Educational Developer Daniel Braun here again, with another small selection of excellent resources about distance and online teaching. First, a big thank-you to all the AVĪŽĀė instructors who reached out with warm welcomes and requests for support this week ā€“ consultations are the best part of my job! To the as-yet silent majority from whom I havenā€™t heard: please donā€™t hesitate to contact me anytime at otl@concordia.ab.ca with your questions and ideas for Spring, Summer, or Fall.

My first recommendation is this from The Chronicle of Higher Education. It does an excellent job of simplifying the sometimes dizzying possibilities of distance teaching down to 5 key, ā€œlow techā€ areas of focus. If youā€™re feeling overwhelmed and donā€™t know where to start, or even if youā€™ve already started, I strongly recommend this short piece for its clarity, directness, and excellent suggestions. I didnā€™t write it, but I wish I had!

If youā€™re wondering about engagement and interaction in the online environment, Dr. Erika Smith from Mount Royal University has created an excellent little about the 3 vectors every course should juggle: student-content, student-instructor, and student-student. Itā€™s free to download and print, and a useful reminder to keep at hand when doing your course re-design over the summer.

Finally, this of York Universityā€™s new BOLD website is particularly suited to AVĪŽĀė instructors thinking about online assessment, because they also use Moodle! So youā€™ll find general principles, specific strategies, and even ways to implement them in Moodle, all on this page (but note that AVĪŽĀė does not use the Crowdmark software mentioned in a few spots).

Have you come across any distance teaching resources you loved? If so, please let me know!