Contextualizing the transition to remote learning

There is a difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. It is tempting to think that what happened in Spring 2020 was emergency remote teaching, and that what will happen in Fall 2020 is online learning. In reality, those of us teaching remotely in Fall 2020 are still very much in the realm of ERT. In "The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning", the authors clarify:

"Typical planning, preparation, and development time for a fully online university course is six to nine months before the course is delivered... It will be impossible for every faculty member to suddenly become an expert in online teaching and learning in this current situation, in which lead times range from a single day to a few weeks."

Key takeaways from the article

• Ensure that accessibility is addressed in ERT so all students are able to access course materials. See Creating Accessible Content for ideas.
• There are many options in online learning design, some of which are common to online and face-to-face instruction (e.g., student-instructor ratio), others being unique to online learning (e.g. whether the class is run synchronously ****or ****asynchronously).
• Recognize that teaching is not just information transmission, but also a "social and cognitive process".
  • Face-to-face education is an entire ecosystem with formal, informal, and social resources
  • Effective online learning happens when there exists a learning community with "co-curricular engagement and other social supports"

Prepare for your imminent ERT classes

There are many existing resources for preparing courses for remote delivery. Some that we think are particularly helpful or relevant for linguists are listed below.

Association of College and University Educators (ACUE)

In response to COVID-19, the ACUE released an Online Teaching Toolkit that features a set of short videos with resources and recommendations for transitioning to the online environment, focused on six topic areas:

1. Welcoming students to the online environment
2. Managing your online presence
3. Organizing your online course
4. Planning and facilitating quality discussions
5. Recording effective microlectures
6. Engaging students in readings and microlectures

Modern Language Association (MLA)

The Modern Language Association has a similar collection of resources compiled in March 2020 for online teaching in the humanities, incorporating issues of accessibility, decolonizing your syllabus, fostering community, designing assessments, and more.

Chronicle of Higher Education

The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Going online in a hurry" provides a fast, step-by-step guide to reconsidering your syllabus and assignments. Developed for the rapid shift online in March 2020, the advice is useful for converting any course which had already been prepared for face-to-face delivery.