You may need to teach your face-to-face class without the benefit of classroom meetings. With a little prior planning this is doable, and part of transitioning successfully is communicating efficiently with students. Here’s two basic messages you should plan on sending, in the event that must move a face-to-face class online:
The ASAP Announcement: in an email, in D2L, or in a classroom, make clear to your students that changes are coming, so they should be watching or listening to them. ASAP announcements tell students that the course is still a going concern, and to be attentive. Let them know how you will next communicate with them, with a plan and details. This can preempt a lot of similar emails from students seeking guidance, and buys you time to retool the course as needed. Lastly, you can give them a quick instruction (ex. “Meantime, keep reading the assigned readings for this week.”)
The Modified Syllabus. Once you’ve at least roughed in a course plan change, edit your syllabus, or even create an addendum document that as briefly and clear as possible, spells out to students what they need to do during the next several days or weeks. You may make further changes as necessary later, but the Modified Syllabus document sets the course on a new path so students can continue working and learning in your course. It’s the “course-plan-until-further-notice.” You can announce subsequent modifications to students with suitable advanced notice, but try, in a single document, to get the big modifications made so students can more easily manage the changes on their end. While you wish to preserve the learning goals and rigor of your course, try to keep your modifications simple and if possible, repetitive. This is good advice for any course planning.
Obviously, developing a course plan is the big job. COLI has a laid out a guide that can help you get started, that’s part of our academic preparedness site for faculty.
For more tips on how to prepare your classes for unforeseen, course-changing circumstances, go to www.canisius.edu/prepare.