Teaching Online
When and How Might I Adapt an In-Person Teaching and Learning Experience to a Virtual Environment?
Faculty will want to keep a close eye on Hoya Alerts for weather-related changes to class modality. This practice will give you enough time to inform students of the change and communicate any other key information. For election or other event-related changes, faculty will want to inform students as early as possible, ideally no later than three hours before class begins. Faculty have discretion to make class changes for major events, such as voting in a national election or due to disruptions from protests.
Some of the activities that we’ve come to rely on in class can be challenging to reproduce in a virtual environment. The resources below provide suggestions to get you thinking about how you might develop your own creative solutions. Below are some resources that work in either synchronous (at the same time) or asynchronous (online at times determined by participants) environments.
How Do I Design an Equitable Experience for All Students?
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework that improves teaching and optimizes course design to meet the needs of all learners. The key assumption underlying UDL is that all learners are different and that a one-size-fits-all design can impose unnecessary learning barriers. Being able to proactively understand and anticipate needs arising from such differences can help instructors remove unnecessary barriers and optimize challenges that lead to the accomplishment of the learning objectives. The following resources include key principles, guidelines, and examples of UDL.
- Accessibility in Virtual Learning Environments (Instructional Continuity website)
- About Universal Design for Learning (CAST official website): CAST is the organization that first devised UDL. Review the key principles and guidelines on its official website.
- UDL in Higher Education (UDL On Campus official website): Review applications and examples of UDL in higher education.
- Universal Design for Learning (CNDLS’ resources for and examples of applying UDL to course design)
