The UCSB KeepTeaching site is a central hub to support teaching and learning through disruptions to on-campus instruction. Instructors can draw on the teaching pedagogies and technologies that they learned during remote instruction to enhance teaching in any modality: face-to-face, blended, flipped or hybrid. The resources on this site are designed to support you; if you can’t find what you’re looking for, email us your question or schedule a consultation.
It is anticipated that UCSB will hold most of its courses in-person classes in Fall 2021! All official campus-level policies for instruction can be found on:
- UCSB Covid-19 Information page
- Chancellor’s messages webpage and
- The Academic Senate’s Guidance for Faculty during the Covid-19 pandemic webpage.
Designing Courses for Resilience
Accommodations to instructional practices may continue to be warranted for a variety of reasons, and we encourage instructors and TAs to design their courses to be resilient and responsive to current circumstances. Designing a resilient course will likely involve blending effective in-person, online, and asynchronous teaching strategies to create multiple ways for students to engage with the course material, each other and you.
These six power strategies for resilience can help!
- Make sure students can find everything they need on your course GauchoSpace page (announcements, learning outcomes, assignment instructions, due dates, rubrics, Zoom links, etc.) - GauchoSpace help can assist you!
- Record a screencast of your lecture and your voice using Panopto, available on all general assignment classroom computers.
- Create (and communicate) a plan for letting students know how to access course materials and meetings remotely in case of campus emergencies.
- Create a course roadmap and weekly pattern to show connections between activities, assessment and course goals.
- Use rubrics for grading complex assignments and share them with students from the outset.
- Incorporate exit tickets to learn about what’s resonating with students and adjust your teaching accordingly.
When you and/or TAs communicate with students...
- Set and maintain a positive tone by using GauchoSpace communication tools, such as a welcome message, Peachmail, and introductory surveys.
- Offer Zoom “Student hours” (formerly known as “office hours”).
- Set up a backchannel in Nectir for students to ask questions during (and between) class.
- Use “light touch” feedback throughout the quarter.
...and build community among students. Consider some of the following:
- Online discussion forums and backchannels
- Group annotated readings and notes
- Peer commenting and review
- Group work and group projects
- Buddy system to facilitate studying and friendships
People learn; we can’t do the learning for them. For this reason, students appreciate opportunities to actively engage in learning.
- Plan your lessons with active learning strategies like think-pair-share, Google Docs, or iclicker questions to encourage engagement during class.
- Use asynchronous activities between class meetings (like discussion forums, Nectir chats, in-video quizzes and collaborative reading/note-taking) to foster continuous engagement.
- Design for flexible engagement: use asynchronous activities for students to interact with each other and the course material outside of the classroom.
- Create policies for flexible deadlines (where possible) in anticipation that some students will have short and longer-term excused medical absences.
- Create multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate and get feedback on their learning in class and in summative assessments (think: active learning and authentic, meaningful assessments).
The more TAs are oriented to the objectives and technologies associated with your course, the more they can be effective liaisons between your ideas and students’ learning.
- TAs need preparation for the technical aspects of teaching; in particular, they would like training before the start of the quarter on instructional technologies (e.g. to grade papers electronically using GradeScope, to help with GauchoSpace, to track attendance, to run section or lab on Zoom).
- Communicate frequently with TAs: make an agenda for your weekly meeting with TAs and invite them to add their topics, email the group to check in weekly.
- Discourage your TAs from conducting “dual-mode instruction” with some students in-person and some online. This modality is very difficult, logistically, and can result in a worse experience for both in-person and online students.
- Think about how the TA role might shift in the event of a campus disruption, and how you can help them prepare for their (new) responsibilities.
Prepare in advance, whether there is a short disruption to on-campus learning due to a power outage, poor air quality, etc., or a longer disruption like a public health emergency. Use this checklist to help ensure that your course is set up to support your students’ learning.
- Sign up for the UCSB Alert system to receive messages with important updates.
- Add a paragraph to your syllabus that tells students how they should expect to communicate with you, TAs, and other students about the course should there be a disruption.
- Establish preferred ways to communicate with the members of your teaching team.
- Create a GauchoSpace site for your class with all of the pertinent information that will allow students to navigate the course in the event of a shift to remote learning.
- Download, install, and sign into Zoom and Panopto on your home computer.
- Create a permanent Zoom meeting link for your course, and post it on your GauchoSpace site (it can be hidden until needed or used for office hours).
- Add the GauchoCast block to your GauchoSpace site to provide students access to recorded videos.
- Use the KeepTeaching Tech Tutorials page to familiarize yourself with GauchoSpace, GauchoCast, Panopto, Zoom, and other technologies that can support flexible learning.
- Familiarize yourself with your General Assignment classroom attributes and campus emergency procedures.
- Identify an off-campus location to stream or record that has good internet and is free of visual and audio distractions.
Pre-Fall Workshops for Instructors and TAs
Instructional Development, CITRAL, GauchoSpace, Nectir, GradeScope and iClicker have teamed up to offer a variety of pedagogical and educational technology workshops for the first three weeks of September. The full list of workshops and registration information is on the regularly updated Google Doc of Pre-Fall workshops.
September 20-24, 2021
- Intro to Gauchospace for Instructors
- Gauchospace: Course Format/Design
- TA Orientation (new TAs only)
Previous Announcements
Teaching Modes: In-person, Mixed, and Online
The image below describes some teaching modes that may be useful for Fall 2021. Please contact Instructional Development to discuss what might work best for your courses.
RISE 2021 in August
(Reimagining Instruction for the Student Experience)
RISE 2021 will guide and support instructors to continue to think about instruction through student experiences and larger sociocultural contexts as we transition from remote emergency teaching to the next iteration of our courses. Institute participants will complete asynchronous activities and join optional synchronous sessions with colleagues, guided by facilitators, to build on experiences of the past year and explore new questions and ideas. See more details and application form for RISE 2021 here.
Campus Senate Announcement April 2021
In a memo to faculty on April 16, Divisional Chair of the Academic Senate, Susannah Scott explained, “Instructors may wish to continue to offer courses online, having adopted new technologies and developed new content during the emergency remote instruction period that is well-suited to their courses. Regular online instruction occurs with prior Senate approval. This approval is required for any course in which 50% or more of the instruction (from the student perspective) is offered online… Requests for online course approvals undergo a rigorous [Senate] review…
Temporary approval for continued remote instruction in the fall will be granted as-needed and automatically, without the need for formal Senate review, in any of the following three scenarios:”
- State or county restrictions on either the maximum size of an in-person class (e.g., 200 persons), or the classroom capacity (e.g., 50% of normal capacity).
- Some of our international students will be unable to arrive in time for the start of fall quarter, due to the backlog of visa processing.
- Some instructors (both faculty and graduate students) may have medical conditions that prevent them from teaching in person in fall quarter as well. “Reasonable accommodations,” as negotiated by the Workplace Accommodations team, might include remote teaching.
The memo continues: “The EVC has announced that instructors will not be required to teach in dual modes if it would lead to a significant increase in their workload. Instructors who are willing to teach both face-to-face and remote students may need specially equipped classrooms and additional support from deans, via their chairs. Instructional Development is available to consult and assist in developing plans for such courses. Instructors may also find the summer 2021 Reimagining Instruction for the Student Experience (RISE) Institute helpful in refining their teaching plans.”
Instructors who wish to pursue Senate approval for online or hybrid courses outside the three scenarios above should contact Mindy Colin at Instructional Development for guidance on the application and approval process.
Senate Town Hall on Fall Planning, April 2021
- Senate Slide Presentation (Requires UCSB Login to Senate site.)
- Recording of Town Hall Meeting (Requires UCSB Login to Senate site.)