A Tweet a Day Keeps the Swine Flu Away

by Lorraine B. Elder

Okay, Twitter is not really the new Tamiflu, but educational technology and social media are useful tools in combating the effects of sweeping illness. The World Health Organization has declared a flu pandemic, meaning widespread human H1N1 infection is occurring. Many colleges are bracing for large numbers of flu-related absences among staff and students. Wise faculty members are planning ahead to ensure continuity of classes in the event that either they or their students are felled by flu. Here are some steps you can take.

Use Officially Supported Tools

First, try using officially supported tools at your campus. At Northern Arizona University, we recommend using Blackboard Vista for posting class materials, iTunes U for distributing podcasts, Elluminate for live web conferences, and classlists.nau.edu for sending bulk emails to all students enrolled in a class.

Use Social Media

Then in addition to those tools, consider using social media—your blog, a class wiki, Twitter—to communicate frequently with your students if you or a large number of them are ill and can’t come to class. Just be sure to tell students which social media you’re using. Blogs are good for pushing information out to students while also giving them a mechanism for offering comments and feedback. Wikis are especially good for allowing students to complete group projects even if one or more group members get sick, and by collaborating online, sick students reduce the risk of infecting their classmates. If you designate a hashtag for your class, Twitter can serve as a chat tool and discussion board.

Use File Formats Accessible to All Students

Students don’t all have access to the same versions of software that you do, so avoid posting your class materials in formats that require proprietary software. For example, you might have the latest version of Microsoft Word, but your students might have an older version or no version at all, which means they won’t be able to open your .docx files. Instead, convert your class materials to web pages that students can view in a browser. In a pinch, you can convert documents to PDFs, which students can view using Adobe Reader or other free PDF viewers. But keep accessibility in mind for students who use screen readers or other assistive technology.

Record Short, Targeted Podcasts or Webcasts

While we don’t advocate recording entire class-length lectures, we do suggest scripting and recording short (no more than 5–10 minutes each) talks or demonstrations focused on a single key point or topic in your course. Audio recordings are fine for some subjects. Others, particularly demonstrations, lend themselves to video recordings. Be sure to include transcripts, and tell students where to find the recordings. If you have access to iTunes U, post them there. If not, post them in your learning management system or on your blog.

Communicate

At the outset of your class, tell students how you will communicate with them if you become ill, and tell them which communication channels they should use to let you know when they’re sick. Take a look at the Communication Toolkit for Institutions of Higher Education. Above all, be flexible and understanding with your students. Remember that the H1N1 virus seems to affect younger people more strongly than older people, so instead of giving students grief for missing class, send them some virtual chicken soup.

Ask for Help

Most campuses have support organizations that can help you figure out which kinds of educational technology are appropriate for you and your students. Don’t hesitate to ask for guidance.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tips for Teaching Online

by Lorraine B. Elder

Dr. Judith V. Boettcher has written Teaching Online for the First Time — The Quick Guide. She lists ten best practices for designing and teaching a course, and most are spot on, with the possible exception of

Best Practice 5: Use both synchronous and asynchronous activities

Using both kinds of activities works only if your online students know up front that’s an expectation. Many students think online inherently means asynchronous, so be clear in your class description about whether synchronous activities are included in the course, and be sure to list the dates and times of the synchronous activities on a class preview page so students can figure out even before they register whether their school, work, and life schedules will permit them to be available at those times.

To Dr. Boettcher’s list, I’d add a few more implementation tips that the e-Learning Center has learned from years of working with faculty in preparing online and hybrid courses.

1. Don’t try to create an online course on the fly while you’re teaching it. You won’t like it and neither will your students.

If your in-person teaching style entails glancing at your notes—or not—a few minutes before class starts and then winging it by speaking extemporaneously, you’ll be tempted to approach online teaching the same way. Don’t do it. You’ll fumble with the technology (or it will go down at an inopportune time); you won’t have an adequate list of resources and supplemental materials available for your students; you’ll forget to include important details in your assignment instructions, confusing your students and sparking a flood of emails or discussion posts asking for clarification; and in an asynchronous course, your students will be irritated if they’re ready to proceed but you aren’t because you haven’t yet built out the course. They’re busy people, too, who don’t want you wasting their time.

2. Posting PowerPoint presentations online does not constitute an online course, no matter how many slides you include.

A bunch of bullet points out of context and lacking a speaker to fill in the details isn’t what students need. Neither are slides packed with overstuffed paragraphs. If you need to write paragraphs to convey your information, put them on a web page, not on a slide. Put the bullet points on web pages, too, and also write the information you would have said aloud in a face-to-face presentation. Or include an audio recording (with transcripts!) of what you would have said to accompany the slides.

Don’t expect students to intuit what you meant by your cryptic, one- or two-word bullets. What’s obvious to you—an expert— won’t be obvious to them—novices. Explain yourself.

I’ll have more to say on the evils of PowerPoint in a future blog post.

3. Make your course accessible to all students, including those who have disabilities.

It’s easy and desirable in an online course to include clips of rich instructional media, such as videos and audio. Be sure to include captioning or transcripts so that all students get the full benefit of the media without having to ask for special accommodations. Even students who don’t have disabilities often appreciate captions and transcripts. Also make sure your course can be navigated easily with a keyboard, not just a mouse, and check with your campus Disability Resources office to be sure that screen reader software can interpret your course material.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.