LibGuides: Remote Instruction: Home

Remote Instruction Welcome!

This resource guide identifies and provides links to a wide range of materials, services, and technology supporting or related to teaching remotely at the college level.

Summer 2020 Triage:

Looking for help or have a question regarding remote instruction? Email: remotehelp@skidmore.edu

Support for Teaching Online: relevant Skidmore departments.

CLTL
The Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning (CLTL) partners with faculty, staff, and students to promote excellence and innovation in teaching and learning through inclusive, evidence-based, and student-centered practices.
LEDS
Learning Experience Design & Digital Scholarship Support (LEDS) promotes and supports technology-enhanced learning.
Lucy Scribner Library
Provides the resources and services necessary to support the College’s mission
MDOCS
The John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative (MDOCS) embeds documentary within Skidmore's core curriculum and its culture.
IdeaLab
A MakerSpace for Skidmore College's community of makers (artists, designers, entrepreneurs, builders, and creatives).

Best Practices for Teaching Online: A few tips

Be present in your course - post, comment, and engage frequently
Design a number of lower-stakes items to grade so students get consistent feedback on their understanding of content
Create spaces for students to engage informally - a discussion board to ask questions in for instance.
Design the course in a consistent, intuitive way. Don't make students hunt down where to submit things or what they need to do.
Create guidelines for how often students should check-in in their course, and how long it will take you to respond to questions and emails
If incorporating synchronous meetings, make sure to give times and dates for them in your syllabus
Tell students where to go if they need non-course specific help: link to the Help Desk, the Library, and other campus resources from your course shell.
Be friendly and human, make connections with your students
Have your course prepared in advance. Grading and interaction in an online course can be time-consuming, developing content simultaneously can get overwhelming.
Be flexible and provide options. Students appreciate options in how and when assignments need to be completed.

Selected Best Practices Resources:

Best Practices in Online Teaching Strategies
In this 2009 report, the Hanover Research Council reviews the best practice teaching strategies in the field of online education.
Harvard's Teach Remotely Resource
A comprehensive list of best practices and considerations for remote education including how best to curate and generate content for the online classroom asynchronously, and run online lessons synchronously.
How To Be a Better Online Teacher
Chronicle's advice collection on best practices, and common misconceptions.
NEA Guide to Teaching Online
See Section IV - a handy grid of the skills needed to teach online.
SUNY Online Course Developer Handbook
A step-by-step manual to online course development created by SUNY Online. Guides instuctors through reflection, best practices, and course development.

Best Practices for Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Learning by Dunn, Dana S., et al.
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9780199733187
Publication Date: 2011-02-02
Best Practices for Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Learning brings together expert teacher-scholars who apply and assess technology's impact on traditional, hybrid or blended, or completely on-line courses, relying on technology as a teaching tool for classroom management and interaction (e.g.,Blackboard, PowerPoint, student response or "clicker systems," multimedia tools), as well as student-based uses of technology largely independent of instructors (e.g., social networking on popular sites including Facebook and MySpace). Each chapter will address how technological improvements can be connected to assessment initiatives, as is now routinely advocated in psychology and social science education. The book features current scholarship and pedagogy involving innovative technology that impacts on student learning in psychology and related disciplines, focusing also on student reactionsto these novel technologies, and proper assessments of how well they promote learning. This text will serve as the standard reference on emerging technologies for undergraduate instructors.

Lucy Scribner Library

Remote Instruction: Home