

All Woods College faculty and encouraged and invited to join the Faculty Orientation and Resources Canvas site. This site will be used to introduce new faculty to the Woods College of Advancing Studies as well as act as a dashboard for news, updates, and advice for all faculty. The site includes pages dedicated to the students, WCAS policies, online course guides. It also includes faculty testimonials as well as video tutorials. Faculty who are registered in the BC system (i.e., have accepted their contract and logged into their BC emails) may access the Canvas site here.
Dear Colleagues,
Here is a link to a Chronicle of Higher Education article that you may find helpful if you need to move your class to a new format in response to the COVID-19 virus. The author provides a step-by-step process to consider when moving online quickly. She also provides links to additional resources you might find helpful. I’ve excerpted it below, so you know if you want to read further.
This may be redundant for faculty who teach online; however, some of the resources she mentions might be intriguing to explore.
Here is the short version of what she suggests:
You might want to review these resources:
From Stanford:
From Vanderbilt:
As always, reach out if you have questions or ideas you’d like to share.
Karen
Karen Muncaster, PhD
Dean, Woods College of Advancing Studies
Boston College
617.552.2672
If you are new to using Canvas, you may appreciate some orientation to key Canvas tools and functions.
Assignments: Instructors can create space for students to upload submissions, from informal reflections to formal written assignments and projects. Instructors can select the grading approach within the assignment. Assignments are best for instructors who wish for the students’ work to only be viewed and assessed by the instructor.
Announcements: Instructors can send mass e-mails or messages to the whole class community via the Announcements tool. The benefit to using Announcements over e-mail is that instructors do not need to collect individual student e-mail addresses and that the messages are archived on the course Canvas site.
Discussions: Instructors can create threaded, written discussion forums for instructors to engage in written (or audio/video) dialogue with each other and respond to written prompts.
Files: Instructors can post key course documents, like the syllabus, readings, assignment sheets, and activity descriptions in this space.
Modules: Instructors can organize course content into several chunks or groups of learning content. The pieces of information that students will access, including the syllabus, assignment sheets, activity descriptions, and outside links and resources, can be grouped together in the order that students might access those resources during a synchronous or asynchronous class session. Modules can give students access to readings, activity descriptions, outside links, and assignment submission links all in one place.
Pages: Instructors can create content for students to read or access that is not already created on a separate website or in a Word Document or other kind of document. The settings for Pages can also be changed so that the page can be edited by both instructors and students to create a class Wiki.
* This passage is taken from, Teaching Effectively during Times of Disruption, by Jenae Cohn and Beth Seltzer of Stanford University
You may want to familiarize yourself with Zoom, which will allow you to conduct your class “live”. The University now has sufficient Zoom licenses for all faculty.
CTE website contains great ideas on how to prepare to teach using the digital tools available and suggestions on strategies you might use.
Communication will be key if we need to make these instructional changes. You might want to create an email template for communicating with students in such an event – outlining your plan for moving the course online, explaining changes you’ve made, and identifying what technology they’ll be using to participate in the course. Learn how to email your class as a group.
Michelle Elias Bloomer
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs
eliasm@bc.edu
Tristan Johnson
Associate Dean for Graduate Affairs
johnsazq@bc.edu.
BC Technology Help Center
(617) 552-HELP (4357)
help.center@bc.edu or live tech support chat (M-F 9am-5pm)
Sasha Tomic
Director of the Master of Science in Applied Economics program and Associate Dean for Strategy, Innovation, and Technology
a.tomic@bc.edu
*equipment with touch-screen capability will greatly facilitate recording any hand-written material. Using a Bluetooth headphone/headset will help if you record a lecture where you move away from the laptop (e.g. walk around the classroom).
You can fall back on this option if it is expected that several class periods will be missed. To optimize your synchronous Zoom class meeting:
*This information is adapted by Woods College of Advancing Studies staff based on information collated by Brandeis CTL staff and CTL partners from the following sources: Georgetown University's Instructional Continuity Website, Dartmouth University's Academic Continuity During Disruption Website, Brown University's Teaching Continuity Guide and a National Conversation Among Centers for Teaching and Learning
Dear all,
Boston College is closely monitoring developments related to the COVID-19 virus. At this moment, classes are set to continue as scheduled, but it is quite possible that some of us might be affected by the virus and will not be able to attend class in-person.
Thank you all for your patience during this time.
Wishing you a healthy week,
Karen
--
Karen Muncaster, Ph.D.
Dean, Woods College of Advancing Studies
Boston College
617.552.2672