Join the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) for one of our Online Teaching Certificate (OTC) multi-week courses:
Please register in advance. Email celt@stonybrook.edu if you have any questions.
In March 2020, the pandemic pushed all faculty and students to a remote teaching reality. CELT is hosting two online conversations where faculty members can get together to talk about what worked well, what they might want to incorporate into their teaching practice moving forward, and what they wish they had known back then.
When you register, you will have the option to respond to three reflective prompts. Using those responses, we will take a deeper dive into what actions faculty can take as they prepare to teach in the fall.
Your responses will remain confidential and will only be shared in aggregate as part of our study on the overall effectiveness of CELT. Your participation in this study is voluntary and you may continue to participate in CELT services even if you withdraw from the study of its effectiveness.
Register in advance to attend either of the CELT Reflections on Remote Teaching. Even if you cannot attend, register so that you can receive the recording and resources.
Jennifer Jaiswal, Instructional Designer & Sr Instructional Technologist
Congratulations to Dr. Virginia Coletti who received the Excellence in Teaching a Synchronous Online Course award at CELT’s Celebration of Teaching Awards on May 6, 2021, for development of HNI 373, online, Psychosocial Mental Health Nursing. This course, when taught face-to-face, enrolled about 80 students each term it was scheduled. When COVID-19 shut down the HSC last spring Dr. Virginia Coletti, Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, collaborated with CELT to develop a synchronous version of the course that would support active learning.
In changing a course with many practical and active learning components in it, she started with the learning outcomes. Working with Jennifer Jaiswal from CELT she created new learning objectives for each session of the course that would serve the students as a measure for what they would be learning and engaging with each week. Redesigning the learning outcomes allowed her to narrow down the topics to what was essential and ensure that all activities were aligned with the course level outcomes.
Once the course was redesigned and reorganized, a question arose: when should the content be delivered? Psychosocial Mental Health Nursing is a 6 credit course with 3 credit hours of in class lecture and work and 3 credit hours of clinical experience. Virginia worked closely with her clinical instructors to move content between the weekly class and the clinical experience to ensure the learning outcomes were met each week. Group texting with her 10 instructors ensured that they knew what was covered each week in lecture and what needed to be covered during the clinical sessions.
One of the major changes in the course was to take time to show processes, such as making nursing diagnosis, or hosting group therapy sessions, before requiring students to complete the task. Previously these would be completed in person with students asking questions as they worked through the process. In her Zoom sessions, Virginia scaffolded her lessons so that she could walk students through the project before allowing the students to complete the project on their own. This led to more insightful comments about the nursing process and patient care.
Virginia recommends:
What students appreciated the most about the course was when Virginia would take time to listen to the students about their concerns. Using formative evaluations and communicating frequently with students through the semester allowed Virginia to assess when things may need to be changed, make adjustments to how and when content would be covered, and when to take a break in the course to give students time to prepare.
Congratulations to Virginia. CELT is delighted to have honored her work. If you missed it, you can watch the entire ceremony.
From May 25th-27th, the SUNY Center for Professional Development hosted the annual Conference on Instruction and Technology (CIT), which took place virtually this year. The theme for CIT 2021 was “Working Together to Prepare all Students for a Lifetime of Learning” and included the following tracks:
The Keynote speaker was Jesse Stommel, Ph.D, executive director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at University of Mary Washington, co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: The Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy and co-editor of Disrupting the Digital Humanities. In addition, there were concurrent short talks, poster sessions, exhibitions sessions, and FACT2 Excellence awards. With the shift to remote learning during the pandemic, many presentations focused on innovations in online learning and teaching including strategies for large enrollment online classes, gamification, Open Educational Resources (OERs), equitable assessments, tools for engagement online, and effectively teaching music/art virtually.
There were many great tips and resources presented, so we hope you explore the recordings here!
Stony Brook is a member of the Online Learning Consortium, or OLC. The OLC supports online, blended, and digital learning in higher education. Stony Brook University has an institutional membership. If you would like to take advantage of our membership services, create an account using your Stony Brook email address.
Some of their free resources include:
Let us know if you have any questions or if you want to discuss something you found interesting!
Linda Unger, Senior Instructional Designer
Congratulations to Dr. Sangeet Honey who was recently honored at CELT’s Celebration of Teaching Awards, for development of BIO 315 Microbiology, online. This course, when taught face-to-face in Javits, enrolled about 600 students each term it was scheduled. With Javits going offline this month, Dr. Sangeet Honey, Research faculty in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and undergraduate biology program director Dr. Peter Gergen collaborated with CELT to transition the course to fully asynchronous in Blackboard.
Quite a challenge–redesigning such a large course to a fully asynchronous delivery, but Sangeet’s commitment to his students and Peter’s administrative support made it both possible and, more importantly, effective. Beginning in August of 2019 (no, it didn’t take 2 years), Sangeet collaborated with two instructional designers, Linda Unger and Jennifer Jaiswal, at CELT to rethink how content could be provided, but more importantly, how interaction could be maintained with such a large group of students. Thanks to ample support from Peter in the form of grad and undergrad TAs, Sangeet and CELT were able to create an academically robust structure for students, while managing facilitation workload for Sangeet.
The first fully online version was taught in Summer of 2020 after the Spring course had hastily moved online mid-semester due to the pandemic. Since then it has had numerous tweaks each time to make it run more smoothly by maximizing effective learning activities and redesigning less effective strategies, especially with respect to assessment of students. This course has been taught in Spring 2021 with 400 students and is being taught this Summer 2021 semester with over 100 students.
Throughout these iterations, Sangeet’s “teaching presence” has been consistently excellent, as demonstrated through his recorded lectures; participation in discussion; Zoom office hours; and frequent announcements that provide guidance and general feedback. He also demonstrates compassion, flexibility and approachability with respect to his policies, especially his grading appeals policy.
Sangeet uses:
A critical aspect of Sangeet’s success is his willingness to try new approaches and take risks with new teaching methods in order to engage students and promote learning using various modalities. He’s also worked hard (with CELT’s help) at making his materials accessible.
Peter’s commitment to sound pedagogy in large online courses, as demonstrated by allocation of numerous departmental grad and undergrad TAs, has enabled Sangeet to divide the >400-student class into “teams” of about 35–a critical factor that makes this course run smoothly by giving students a sense of community along with the individual attention they need.
In May, Sangeet received CELT’s annual award for Excellence in Teaching an Asynchronous Online Course at the 2021 Celebration of Teaching and CELT is delighted to have honored his work. Watch the video.
Join us for one of our Online Teaching Certificate (OTC) multi-week courses:
Email celt@stonybrook.edu if you have any questions.
In 2018, the US Department of Education began to discuss the federal regulations as it applies to distance learning today. Prior, the regulations were based on correspondence education and since then, the pedagogy and technology have changed significantly. What follows is a brief overview of the Distance Education and Innovation Regulations which go into effect on July 1, 2021.
These changes better define and clarify the pedagogical and technological options available in the 21st century and support the work SBU faculty already do pedagogically when developing and facilitating online courses. In order for students to receive federal financial aid, online courses must adhere to the federal regulation updates .
Technology
Permitted technologies used for distance education have been updated to incorporate robust applications that can be accessed via the internet. Instructors should use the various tools available via the internet and supported on campus such as: Blackboard, Zoom, and VoiceThread, etc.
Substantive Interaction
The Federal Regulations define as “engaging students in teaching, learning, and assessment, consistent with the content under discussion” (34 CFR 600.2). It also must include at least two different types of interaction. Some examples include:
Regular Interaction
Regular interaction must be “predictable and scheduled” (34 CFR 600.2). Timelines and expectations are critical and should be clearly noted in the syllabus and/or in Blackboard. Instructors should:
In the syllabus and on Blackboard, due dates, expectations of response times, how long after an assignment is due students should expect grades/feedback, and office hours and contact information should all be stated. CELT has a syllabus template, and all of these pieces are addressed in that template.
Regular interaction also includes monitoring the student’s academic engagement which can include: a synchronous class with instructor/student interaction, submitting an assignment or taking an exam, participating in an asynchronous interactive instruction, group discussion or group work, or discussing academic matters with an instructor.
The class must be facilitated and when students request support, instructors respond in a timely fashion.
Academic Honesty
Students signing up for the course, must be the ones that engage in the course. Much of that is supported through DoIT’s Appropriate Use of Information Technology policies which state that students are not allowed to share their login information, they should be creating difficult passwords, and they cannot disguise as another student.
In addition, if instructors would like to use a remote proctoring tool that requires a webcam or any additional resources, this must be stated upfront during registration.
In Closing
The Federal Regulations also state throughout that what we do is also in accordance with any applicable requirement of our accrediting agency and at some points, refer us to our accrediting agency for additional information.
Additional resources can be found on our site. Please join us for a Q&A session:
You can also contact us with any questions you may have.
There have been many Zoom updates over the past few months and we wanted to address them in terms of how they can be used in your class(es)!
SBU Update!
You recently received an email from DoIT about the retention of Zoom recordings:
Starting June 1st, 2021, Zoom cloud recordings older than 180 days will be automatically deleted and sent to a trash folder. This action will be on a rolling basis and recordings will be removed after they pass the 180 day mark. If you wish to keep your recordings, instructions are provided below. Please note that Zoom recordings saved locally to your computer are not affected by this policy.
You can download and save your recordings and/or move your Zoom recordings directly into your Echo account. More information can be found on the Zoom Cloud Recording Retention page.
As you are going through your recordings, think about what you want to keep! Do you want to reuse any content for future classes? According to Richard Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, working memory has a limited capacity (Brame, 2015). Some questions to ask now that the videos are recorded:
Want to chat further? Contact us to set up a consultation!
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Ігор Пєтков, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
References:
Brame, C.J. (2015). Effective educational videos. Retrieved April 2, 2021 from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/effective-educational-videos/
Kimberly Bell, PhD., Postdoctoral Associate
Asynchronous courses, when designed and implemented according to evidence-based research and learning theory, can be just as engaging as in-person or synchronous online courses. If you have asked yourself the following questions, or are unsure of where to start overall, this guide will introduce you to research and tips for making your asynchronous online course engaging.
Getting Started
Presence, Community, Feedback, Technology
These resources will get you started with theory and practice for engaging your students in asynchronous courses. Review the Purdue University Guide to the Community of Inquiry framework, which will introduce you to the concept of “presence” in an asynchronous course. The, dive a bit deeper and read about developing presence and learning community online, including a research study on faculty perspectives. Then, last but not least, review the ways you can give effective feedback with technology. Timely and effective feedback is a critical component of engagement.
Learning Activities for Asynchronous Online Courses
Asynchronous, Interaction, Discussion
These three resources, activity guides from the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching and the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Rochester and the FOLD Guide to Fostering Discussion will all spark ideas for engaging activities and effective discussions you can have in your asynchronous courses.
Learning Tools for Asynchronous Online Courses
Tools, VoiceThread, Discussion, Interaction
Review the resources in this collection to find tools that will help you develop and deploy asynchronous learning activities. VoiceThread is a great tool for asynchronous discussion (even in groups!). The Vanderbilt guide from the Learning Activities collection is repeated here as well, it includes both activities and tools to keep your students engaged.
Additional Teaching Tips for Asynchronous Online Courses
Active Learning, Engagement, Inclusive, Tips, Asynchronous
This collection of resources will provide you with additional tips and tricks for creating engaging asynchronous online courses. Review the IDEA guide for actively engaging students, tips specifically for inclusive teaching from the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning at Brown University, additional tips from Wiley, and a Faculty Focus article on fostering fun!
