About the Seminar
In the transition to remote learning due to the COVID-19 crisis, it can be more challenging than ever to meaningfully support active learning, and to maintain manageable teaching workloads. This Seminar provides strategies and resources for remote communication-intensive instructional design at the course, lesson plan, and assignment level, with a focus on balancing deep learning through writing and speaking with efficiencies for the instructor.
The Seminar’s learning goals are to support faculty in:
- Identifying your learning goals around communication skills-development, writing- and speaking-to learn, and participation
- Identifying opportunities for students to write meaningfully, without increasing your grading load
- Identifying opportunities for students to speak meaningfully, whether you’re teaching synchronously or asynchronously
- Facilitating virtual classroom communities, whether synchronous or asynchronous, with opportunities for low-stakes writing, speaking, and group work
- Designing assignments that clearly communicate learning goals, expectations, and protocol
- Supporting equity for students regardless of access
When we designed and advertised this Seminar, in Summer 2020, an astonishing number of Baruch’s faculty (full- and part-time) expressed interest in participating, and so we worked both synchronously and asynchronously with around 100 instructors, separated into eight unique Cohorts, loosely clustered around academic discipline.
For those of you who were not able to participate, we are sharing all of our asynchronous materials here. We welcome you to watch and engage, and to be in touch if you’d like additional support or dialogue.
Assessment
See here for our Assessment Report on Seminar Outcomes.
Resources
Day 1: Backward Planning for Online Learning
Topics covered: backward planning; scaffolding; facilitating transparency; metacognition
Seminar Introduction
Day 1
Day 2: Writing- and Speaking-to-Learn to Generate Engagement
Topics covered: writing- and speaking-to-learn; generating engagement and community; keeping the grading load manageable; supporting multilingual students
Day 2 Part 1
Day 2 Part 2
Day 3: Responding Productively – and Time-Efficiently – to Student Work and Meaningfully Supporting Equity
Topics covered: formative feedback strategies; efficiencies for feedback strategies; supporting equity
Day 3 Part 1
Day 3 Part 2
Day 3 Part 3
